Slashdot Mirror
Redefining Security Visualization With Hollywood UI Design
An anonymous reader writes: Most security interfaces today leave a lot to be desired, and many security pros are gaming enthusiasts, accustomed to a sharp and engaging virtual world. ProtectWise CEO Scott Chasin and CTO Gene Stevens wanted to give them a helpful security tool with an interactive visual dashboard that looks straight out of Call of Duty. The UI is called ProtectWise Visualizer, and its creator is Jake Sargeant, FX pro and a visual designer at MN8 Studio. If his name sounds familiar, it's because he was the Lead Animated Graphics Artist for the movie TRON: Legacy.
There's plenty of inspiration available for movie-style UIs; the problem with much of it is that not everyone likes an interface that looks like an especially busy video game.
I've been saying for years software companies should be taking the lead of the UIs we see in the movies.
They often look better designed and convey more information than some of real GUIs I see.
That's a really clean looking dashboard in my opinion.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Lets start by fixing all of the broken "security" mechanisms, then move on to adding a bunch of useless bells and whistles to your monitoring suit. I looked at the UI. It's a fucking ugly mess and in no way would benefit my work, in fact it would make it harder because I'll have to figure out the cheat codes.
the internet isn't tron, it's not 3d buildings with packets flying around. We don't need to Jazz up the interface, we need to repair all of the damage that has been done, this doesn't help that at all.
What it does do though, is make your security guy feel really special because he's got this epic whiz bang interface with pie charts and graphs and lots of blinking lights.
True security is done in logs.
There was a DOOM skin for systems administration 15 years ago.
mark "that java process! Where's my BFG 9000?!"
Anyone who cares this much about a dashboard can build one pretty easily these days.
An mp4 of the dashboard visualizer is on the page at
https://www.protectwise.com/pl...
instead of a tiny jpg.
Looks nice for a dash.
While I like the idea of thinking about UI improvements, and I certainly don't mind having new ideas in the realm, the thing that you most need to consider when bringing UI ideas from the game world is that gaming is designed to be challenging, while the purpose of a good functional UI is to remove challenges. Bringing UI ideas in from hollywood is slightly easier, because their intent is to be visually interesting, which is a bonus for a functional UI if, and only if, you can make it visually interesting without compromising functionality (or preferably in a way that enhances functionality)
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
To see if I can track an IP address!
"No fucking way I'm using something so silly."
Then i looked at the screenshots.... ok im ready to download now.
Have we reached a new low where now Slashdot articles are supported by a link to Pinterest?
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
The rail gun was much more fun than typing out kill -TERM.
Video game UIs are often very good, if flashy. They have to be--they're actually used, and used by people who want good performance.
Simulated UIs in movies and TV, on the other hand, just have to look good, and feed whatever plot information is relevant to the audience. This means things are done that really wouldn't work in a real UI. That's why attempts to turn Star Trek's "LCARS" interface into a real UI have fallen on their faces.
I tried to follow the second link and it gave the usual "OH NOES! YOU DON'T HAVE JAVASCRIPT!!!!1" complaint, so I turned on Javascript and it made some stupid window-shade thing that covers up the page as you scroll down. Why does Firefox allow this crap? The page content is clearly rendering behind the shade, so why not just let me view it?
Anyway, the following line in userContent.css fixes that scrolling window shade garbage, in case you really want to see a few examples of UI design even worse than Windows 8:
div[class="appContent hasKLPBar"] { visibility: hidden !important; }
If your security professionals need a game-like UI, you have a serious problem. Maybe we shouldn't hire children for important roles.
There's a bit more to usability than looking good.
Win 8 & Gnome 3 look good.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So he knows about as much about designing real UIs for real systems that real people use to do real tasks as C.S. Lewis did about travelling through a real magic wardrobe and helping a real talking lion to overthrow a real witch who can really turn creatures to stone.
I could go on.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There are 2 problems:
1. A lot of "futuristic" UI relies on touch. This is retarded. Arms get tired.
I guess that isn't as flashy as a machine that can read your brainwaves.
2. All these display devices take up tons of physical room. Again this is dumb. A HD version of Google glass, or an implant on the cornea, would provide tons of virtual space and not take up bulky "monitors". I guess "wall sized" monitors is sexy though.
It is very pretty. It's really visually appealing. Which is great when you want to relax and passively watch a movie. I personally don;t like it for video games, but the masses don;t seem to agree with me there.
None the less, it is absolutely awful for clearly expressing information, especially such complex information. I hope that the underlying product is better than this GUI. I hope that it isn't just lipstick on a pig.
Speaking of pigs, Snort could use a good GUI. No, the one you are about to recommend sucks ass.
True security is done in logs.
I get what you're saying, and you certainly have a valid point about flashy GUIs not necessarily being effective GUIs.
However, speaking as someone who does a lot of UI work, there is also the other side of the coin, which is that CLIs and plain text log files are often neither the most efficient nor the most accurate way to configure or discover the things you care about.
In their favour, plain text formats are amenable to scripting and analysis using general text manipulation tools, and of course they have longevity. But they are also unstructured, they offer little interactive, real-time support, and ultimately they are limited to what you can express in sequences of characters (which is just about anything, but only if you're willing to write enough).
Even in highly technical environments, a good visualisation can present information in a form that is prioritised and draws attention to the most important features or anomalous results, or that gives a realistic overview of the current situation far quicker than scanning text output would. If you start to make those visual representations interactive, you can potentially also make complicated configuration work or progressive explorations of the data quicker and less error-prone.
Well sometimes a giant wall of glass is useful for everyone to look at to be able to get on the same page while having their own local screens to view specifics they care about as they coordinate efforts when shit goes wrong.
Time to offend someone
It's a Unix system. I know this!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Problem is security UIs need to be accesible anywhere and quickly. That menas lightweight and simple.
Game UIs and stuff coming out of Hollywood run on top of the line graphic cards, or they edited into a movie in POST. No security guy's going to lug around a Alienware desktop to log in and change a few config files for a 2 min task.
... and many programs for that matter.
MS gets into trouble every time they release a new OS and its mostly gripes about GUI issues. Why not solve that by having them be two separate products?
There are already some third party GUIs. They generally fall back on MS interfaces when things get down and dirty but the general file navigation and application execution and desktop experience is already something you can replace in some cases.
MS should have a framework/api for replacing the interface with... whatever.
This is also a big security and ease of use thing.
In corporate environments, a lot of what you're trying to do is give users the ability to access X but not Y. And changing the way the interface works... up and including just outright removing things without a password would actually be pretty cool.
In consumer environments... you know that family member that only does 5 things on their computer and never anything else... and is constantly confused by everything? What if you just removed the ability to do anything but those five things on the machine and made whatever settings they actually might like to play with really prominent... volume... mouse sensitivity... stuff they might like to actually mess with.
I've played around with a few programs to make custom GUIs... I really like Kiosk software for that. It restricts users to what they should be doing not what they shouldn't be doing. And it helps people that are clueless use a system that they'd otherwise struggle with.
I still remember the old litestep days. I especially love the program menus from that GUI. They were LIGHTNING. Because rather than query a folder for short cuts, it just had a text file it kept in memory. The program list was a literal list in a literal text file. So when you clicked on the programs button INSTANTLY open.
Anyway, I think MS's new OS's would be less annoying if they weren't bundled with a mandatory GUI change. Then we could just focus on new features, improved performance, whatever... and people could use whatever GUI made them stiff in the coolness of the night.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I agree with what you're saying. I think the interface they have designed is visually appealing, but it does a poor job of conveying the necessary information. This makes it unfit for the task.
However, this guy did successfully use an LCARS interface on his home automation system.
Yes - the ONE thing that's relevant to the, umm, plot. A real UI generally needs to show several concurrently from a possible set of dozens or even hundreds.
And (this should be blindingly obvious but apparently it isn't) a movie UI is unidirectional, because [spoiler] it's just fucking pretend.
So yeah, apart from that they're totally the same. After the news, some random webtard explains why real-life detectives should say "zoom - enhance" more.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A real UI generally needs to show several concurrently from a possible set of dozens or even hundreds.
It should show you the current relevant ones, just like a plot-driven UI. What you're describing just becomes noise on the screen.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)