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Minority Report's Legacy of Terrible Interfaces
jfruh writes "More than a decade ago, the special effects artists working the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report synthesized experimental thinking about GUIs to produce a floating interface that Tom Cruise manipulated with his hands. In 2013, surrounded by iOS and Android and Windows 8 devices, we use stripped down versions of this interface every day — and commercial artist Christian Brown thinks that's a bad thing. Such devices may look cinematic, he argues, but they completely ignore the kinds of haptic and textured feedback that have defined how we interact with devices for centuries."
Speaking of Minority Report interfaces — a new armband sensor using a gesture-based control scheme is the latest gadget to invoke references to the movie.
1) Gray text
2) Animations
3) Swiping
4) Hiding interface controls
5) No menus
6) buttons anywhere all over the screen
7) "sexy" interfaces
Sent from my ENIAC
I never understood why anyone thought that the computer in Minority Report was something worth pursuing. Futuristic computers in Hollywood movies have always been designed to look cinematic with no regard for how they would actually function. Having an intuitive interface isn't important for Hollywood directors, having something that is interesting for the audience and makes it obvious what's going on is.
One common example of this is maps. 3D maps are all the rage in Hollywood movies, even when a simple address would suffice. But an address has no cinematic quality, a 3D map does.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
computers in real life shouldn't work the way computers work in the movies. OK with me.
Precog
Disclosure, 1994
What about sick sticks? Those would be awesome! They're actually a stupidly bad and ineffective idea but it'd be funny.
They've used the same style GUI on NCIS and it still looks horrible to use.
The biggest problem as I see it is that you can't feel the controls. Like all the interfaces in ST:TNG, there is too much dependence on having to look where your hands are. I think that's a distraction at a very basic level that we haven't fully noticed yet, let alone dealt with in any meaningful way.
Think of your old-school cell phone. You could make a call, even text, without looking at it. (Or, I could. Your mileage may vary, I guess.) Can you do that with your glass-smooth smartphone now?
And yeah, I know. "Siri, Call Police!" "Calling Portobello. When would you like reservations?"
As I see it, the big difference between physical controls and colors and text on a touchscreen is that you can manipulate physical controls while looking elsewhere. There are times when that may be kinda important.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
More than a decade ago, the special effects artists working the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report synthesized experimental thinking about GUIs to produce a floating interface that Tom Cruise manipulated with his hands."
And about a decade before that, people in my lab were arlready testing the effectiveness of haptic interfaces to simulate force-feedback and texture. It was fairly crude and preliminary, but the concept was already established to the point where undergrads had access to this stuff.
But it doesn't look like all that interesting on the silver screen, so I guess Hollywood didn't bother with it.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
After all, who doesn't like to have to do calisthenics before they try to do something complicated such as DRAG FILES FROM A FOLDER AND OPEN THEM!
What kinds of devices have we been interacting with for centuries? That's what I'd like to know.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
....Windows 8, right? OK, maybe not the gray text.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
...between reality emulating film and reality converging on film. The former is something that should generally be avoided when it comes to cinematic user interfaces, given that most of them are designed for cinematic effect, rather than usability. On the flip side, there's nothing wrong with the latter taking place if it just so happens that better usability corresponds to something that's shown up in films (or books, or any other form of media) already. We see this sort of thing happen on a regular basis with sci-fi media inspiring ideas that have value in the real world.
The touchscreens we've been seeing the last few years were in direct response to issues that existed with older-style smartphones, namely that the apps were cramped on a small screen, most of the buttons were useless for a good part of the time, and without relying on specialty buttons, we had to rely on multi-purposing some buttons for additional uses. By making the buttons virtual, the apps themselves become more useful since they can occupy the entire surface of the device, the buttons become more useful because they can visually change to become appropriate for the state in which the app currently resides, and far less irrelevant or extraneous interface shows up on-screen at any given time, thus putting the focus where it belongs.
As the summary mentions (I can't be bothered to read the article, of course), the change to touchscreens did come with some drawbacks, particularly when it comes to haptic feedback, but most of those can be addressed with various advances in technology and engineering.
So, yes, we have some catching up to do to achieve everything we had before, but in the meantime we've gained something more important: smartphones that live up to their name.
I remember the local performing arts center getting new stage managers' consoles. The stupid thing was that the que buttons were on a touch screen. So their was no non-visual feedback as to wether it had been pressed or not. A stage manager has to keep their focus on the stage. They went back to the old push button system. This is just one example where the lack of kinaesthetic feedback makes touch screens a bad UI choice. There are many more examples. Wherever one needs to operate a control without looking directly at that control touch screens are a bad choice.
First, one thing we all probably notice is that your arms are going to get so tired after waving them around so dramatically during a good work session.
Second, what's always fascinated me, is that these large, exaggerated gesture and touch based interfaces always seem to reduce your big inputs into something more precise, where as a mouse / keyboard interface will magnify your already precise movements into something larger.
It's a question of precision I guess. A fingertip can cover up to 30 pixels when you hit the screen with it.. A mouse can be made to hover over 1 or 2 pixels before you click it.
Hackers obviously had the best interface. Why look for a file in an alphabetical list when you can glide around virtual skyscrapers randomly searching for info?
It's perfect.
Is it any surprise that Hollywood gets UI wrong in favor of "looking good" when we have:
* Bad physics (don't even get me started on the sound explosions make in space)
* Bad understanding of current technology (every hacking movie ever -- with the very notable exception of The Social Network)
* Bad history (based on a true story!)
Etc etc.
Hollywood fundamentally wants to make something that "looks pretty" and to hell with practical applications -- because that pretty picture is ultimately what is being delivered to you. In other news, I'm guessing the food in movies doesn't taste as good as it looks either -- but I sympathize with that are set with the general public and those whose job it is to fulfill them.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
commercial artist...?
Before I got my iphone, I'd have agreed with you. I seriously thought of ditching my Android for an old school phone with a real number pad. But with contacts and a touch screen that actually work, I hardly ever key in a number now. Full disclaimer: I've never been much of a texter, so can't really compare the interfaces in that context.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
BARCLAY: Computer, begin new programme. Create as follows, workstation chair. (he sits in it) Now, create a standard alphanumeric console positioned for left hand. Now an iconic display console positioned for right hand. Tie both consoles into the Enterprise main computer core, utilising neural-scan interface.
COMPUTER: There is no such device on file.
BARCLAY: No problem. Here's how you build it.
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Minority Report's interface was not "terrible." It was really good, and so are most interfaces seen in movies.
Well, they're really good for doing what they're supposed to do.
What's the purpose of an interface? To provide a means to make what you want to do understood, and to provide feedback on the results of your actions or requests, and both of these things should be clean and unambiguous.
In a real-life interface, when you're trying to "ACCESS FILES" you move a tiny cursor with small hand gestures and then double click on a "Documents" folder that's next to a bunch of other folders, all labeled with small text fonts. Then you look past a bunch of unrelated files to find the one you might be looking for. Or type "ls" in a command line and a bunch of filenames scroll by. And if you need to enter a name and password, a small box appears for you, and when you get the password right, the box just disappears with no other information, or you get a small red line of text that says "wrong username or password."
This is effective for IRL computer systems, as it makes it easy for the user to unambiguously communicate what they're trying to do, and the results are obvious. In a movie, this is terrible. The director has a three second cut to the screen where the hero is trying to ACCESS SECRET FILES before the rogue agent comes back into his office. And you can hear his footsteps coming down the hall! And a cut to the door handle turning! A cut to the hero! And a cut to the screen! And in those brief cuts, you need to unambiguously tell the audience what's going on with the computer. "ACCESS SECRET FILES: ENTER PASSWORD." "ACCESS DENIED." "ENTER PASSWORD." "ACCESS GRANTED!" "COPYING SECRET FILES 15%.30%." Oh, and bonus points if the hero's face is reflected in the screen, because then the audience can see not only that he's trying to ACCESS SECRET FILES but also his intense expression, to build tension in a scene that's basically about pressing buttons on a computer.
So the interface in Minority Report was great. Cruise was doing something really boring: looking up files on a computer. Spielberg could have just plopped him down in front of Windows 2054 (it's a redress of Windows ME) and had him click on some icons, but instead we get to see exactly what he's doing with big, obvious gestures. "Looking at several videos! Picking these! Rejecting these! Zooming in on these! Marking that!" And all the while you got to see his face through the transparent glass screen. Cruise's actions are clear and unambiguous and his goal and the results are communicated well to the audience. That's a great "interface" between the director and the viewers.
Just saying, you don't pay Tom Cruise $20 million and then spend 2 minutes of your movie showing a mouse clicking around a screen.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"In 2013, surrounded by iOS and Android and Windows 8 devices, we use stripped down versions of this interface every day"
..
No we don't, iOS and the rest were never based on anything from Minority Report. The problem with a Minority Report type of floating interface is that you arms very quickly get fatigued. See an early 3D file system viewer
FSN -- the IRIX 3D file system tool from Jurassic Park
SGI Fusion
AccountKiller
ding ding
Sent from my ENIAC
The Telepod computer, best computer interface ever :) ... (siri sucks compared with that beautiful CLI hehehe)
Notice how Tom Cruise has to list of a huge string of numbers at the start of that clip?
How intuitive and handy.
This is funny to me, because I was watching some old trance music videos for a good laugh last night, and I noticed that at least a couple years before minority report ever came out that they featured these kinds of interfaces. Here's an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHrIPHCBK4
I grew up in a corner of the world that thought this kind of music was for the gays, so I spent being 10 years old thinking 'goddammit the future is obviously happening everywhere but here, all i get to wallow in here is pro wrestling, tom green, and shitty post grunge'... hahaha oh god how far we've come
Too much Spielberg. Not enough Dick.
Nobody instituted gesture interfaces because of Minority Report. Everyone malleable enough to do something like that because of a Sci-Fi movie had already seen Johnny Mnemonic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, I'm not totally clear on this person's background; a critical writer with visual arts experience. Of course he himself has put little to no work into any pratical design of any kind of interface. Unlike either Jaron Lanier or John Underkoffler. The latter designed the whole interface based on 3d spatial gestures (not touch screen one two axis gestures). He is an MIT grad and its not like he just sort of randomly came up with some gestures to make it "look" good. In fact he has a commercial company that has REAL 3d spatial interfaces: oblong industries. These use much of the same gesture vocabulary that was developed for Minority Report.
Secondly, these are not radically different then arm-bands or other attached sensors. In fact in the movie - and in current real world scenarios of oblong products - the user puts on small gloves that allow for very precise gesture measurement. Of course much the same can be done with a a device such as the Kinect. Now an arm band that does muscle sensing uses different "input" but its still an input device using spatial changes as part of its input method.
Thirdly, the point of these interfaces is to move from a verbal vocabulary to a bodily one. I saw both John Underkoffler talk (as well as some of the people who have worked with him). One of their main themes is to get the whole body involved in the expression of "language" used to interact with the computer. The idea is how can you do complex computer interaction with your whole body. The idea is NOT how can you replace the mouse or keyboard. The idea is that the entire body is involved in human experience and expression so how can you engage it human computer interaction.
Fourth, the author of the article does not propose ANY alternatives. Just that he does not like something. I don't think Lanier or Underkoffler would claim they have solved all the problems and limitations of interacting with computers. But, they have made some substantial contributions that at minim provide potential directions and anti-directiosn for future research. While I don't mind critique just saying "it's all bad" without any attempt to contribute seems childish. Is childish.
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
We know how this will end. Someone will get killed because a Cadillac driver was trying to do something the REQUIRES his eyes to be looking at the dash. A sharp attorney will realize this is a design flaw. They will find email and disgruntled ex-employees that will show this was known in advance, and ... well, you know the rest.
Place nail here >+
In 2013, surrounded by iOS and Android, we use stripped down versions of this interface every day
FTFY
If Minority Report really is behind this wave of interfaces, then how long before I can get a Pip-Boy? Or, Leela's arm computer thingy.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
The one in the Island movie was kind of nice. It was a full table touch OS.
Interesting things:
It had this little pyramid placeholder that you could move around to shift focus and group items.
You could twist and fling with it to rotate a window 180 degrees so someone sitting across from you at your desk can edit a document.
Still accepted stylus input for drawings as it's better than touch for control.
I liked that it didn't completely force one particular interface metaphor for everything, the tactile control objects were nice as well as directionality of windows.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The key point of the parent article was made back in 2011, and a bit more clearly, by Bret Victor in his article "A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design".
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/
It's a great piece.
Great, Slashdot users are starting to realize it.
Now how about a group of people that marketing drones actually give a shit about realize that the current trends in devices and their interfaces SUCKS!
on a touch interface I don't get to hover over icons to see what they're called like with a mouse
PROTIP: Long-press a button in an Android action bar to read its title. Unfortunately, this doesn't work with image titles like those seen on xkcd.
Without Fortran, how will we push start to rich?
Samsung's Alias 2 was a great phone. It had a twist-hinge in the middle that could be opened either like a clamshell phone (vertical, for talking) or horizontally as a text keyboard. And the buttons were e-ink, so they took different values depending on how you opened it. Since it was a clamshell, it couldn't butt-dial, and its keyboard was tactile.
But it was not "smart". It used BREW, Qualcomm's dumb-phone software. The screen wasn't touch-enabled and was small for a smartphone. Still, for someone doing more phoning than surfing, it would be better. Too bad they discontinued the line rather than do an Android version.
In the meantime I hang on to my old Sammy clamshell, since I use the phone for, uh, phoning and use my computers for email and the web. This way I use appropriate keyboards and no touch screen. Touch screen require good hand-eye coordination and as a fast touch-typist, I don't look at the keyboard, I feel the keys. Touch screens are just useless to me.
And as others noted above, touch screens in cars should be outlawed as an imminent hazard.
Not only this, but the ST:TNG UIs had tactile feedback, just like mechanical buttons. They did it with miniaturized force fields or somesuch; it's in the TNG Technical Manual.
Was it some sort of technobabble like "microfluidics"? Oh wait, that's not technobabble; that's real (article, video).
Raumschiff Surprise
Minority Report interface which Anderson (aka Tom Cruise) uses to overview results of investigation is essentially meant as evolution of *evidence board*, NOT desktop computer. It is meant for short term interaction, not to write essay. If you maybe seen, there's lot of other computers in that room, and some of them are desktop with *grasp* keyboards.
Some other shows and movies also show such board, but with touch interface and as surface of the desk. Essentially it is meant for again, short term interaction, brainstorming, etc.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Light-controlling sheet switches between mirror and transparent states
All I see is one mans opinion on something he "feels" has been overdone. That's what I call whining.
You can whine about current state as much as you'd like, and you can mention texture and tactile feel technology, that doesn't exist and probably won't for the next 50 years all you want, but that won't change anything.
The interface design of the ipad for instance is incredibly useful, and the learned gestures make sense, complaining about it without offering anything real as an improvement just makes you look like an useless idiot.
The author of the article must be a really bitter, bitter man who doesn't realize Minority Report is just a movie, with computer interfaces designed to look cool rather than practical. In fact, I think Minority Report is one of the lesser offenders when it comes to totally unbelievable bullshit UI's (Jurassic Park and Swordfish spring to mind).
I've never heard or seen any serious designer strive for interfaces that are identical to what we see in Minority Report. Sounds to me like he works with amateurs who can't differentiate between "cool" and "absurd". And he's blaming movies for the rise of touch screens and the touchscreen gestures we use now? Maybe it's the other way around and the people who designed the stuff in Minority Report had a pretty good grasp on what the future would actually bring us.
In the end, the design of Minority Report's "orchestra screen" was brilliant in that it exactly matched it's purpose: to look cool, look (somewhat) realistic and get the necessary information across to the viewer of the movie. That interface probably wasn't designed to be intuitive for the actual user, it was meant to be intuitive for the cinema going audience.
Not having any tactile feedback for where your thumb is relative to the "virtual joystick" centerpoint is why playing FPS style games on tablets is a terrible frustrating experience. Not only that, but with your thumb over the "button", you can't even see if it's in the center. The only way to tell where your thumb is is by the events caused by the position (player turning etc). This makes it almost impossible to remove your thumb from the screen and put it back without screwing something up. Even something as simple as a small physical dot on the screen similar to the F and J keys would go a long way to improving that situation.
Maybe I should just do that....hot glue?
Speaking of gesture based computing and gesture UI, leap motion announced earlier today that it will be releasing later this year and for the low cost of $80.
http://gizmodo.com/5987240/this-sick-3d-gesture-control-hardware-will-only-cost-80
All you dingdongs do realize that "Philip K. Dick" is just a character you're reading about in the story that you're in, right? I read it in a book somewhere. Probably by Kilgore Trout.
On something the size of a smart phone I'm not sure how you're having trouble looking at the action on one part of the screen and pressing buttons on the other.
Outside the fovea, the eye's sensor density isn't very good. So the eye has to move to position the fovea to scan the screen for obstacles, and most of this scanning is done in the area front of the player's character, not at the bottom corners. Compared to a Nintendo DS, when I play a game on a 4" or 7" tablet, I tend to miss the buttons entirely or press the wrong button far more often because my thumb has moved from where I had expected. And part of this is because on a phone, the thumbs are big enough to cover up most of the on-screen directional pad and buttons.
Personally, if I want to play a game that doesn't work well on a touch screen, I'll play it on a device that has buttons.
Provided that it's available for a device that has buttons. What currently mass-produced gaming device smaller than a PC 1. has buttons and 2. allows indie development? Most phones fail #1, and Nintendo and Sony handheld video game systems fail #2.
Are you saying that phones should look like a game controllers so it's easier to play games on them?
The manufacturer of the iControlPad appears to think so, and so did Sony with the Xperia Play. But the problem with external Bluetooth gaming keyboards such as the iControlPad is that few people are willing to buy a $60 gaming keyboard to play a $2 game.
..anybody here make a preorder for that gesture device supposedly comming out early this year? 'leap' something or other... ...seemed to have some resembelance to the m.r. computers interation interface.
dont know if its worth the $80...
https://forums.leapmotion.com/forumdisplay.php?2-General-Discussion-Forum
Are you suggesting that touchscreens are bad because they don't work well with a particular legacy UI model used for playing games
If you can suggest a better UI model for playing platformers, I'm willing to keep my mind open. Or are platformers "legacy" in the first place?
and Sony and Nintendo won't let you code for their devices? Seems like your complaint isn't really about touchscreens then.
My complaint is that buttons are almost perfectly correlated with requiring all developers to be alumni of the establishment.