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UK Industry Group Boss: Study Arts So Games Are Not Designed By 'Spotty Nerds'
nickweller writes: John Cridland is the leader of the Confederation of British Industry, a group that represents over 100,000 UK businesses. In a recent interview, he spoke about his enthusiasm for adding arts education to more traditional STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs. Here's how he chose to express that: "One of the biggest growth industries in Britain today is the computer games industry. We need extra coders — dozens and dozens of them but nobody is going to play a game designed by a spotty nerd. We need people with artistic flair." Cridland also expressed support for an increased emphasis on foreign language education: "If we’re not capable of speaking other people’s languages, we’re going to be in difficulties. However, there is far too much emphasis placed on teaching French and German. The language we most need going forward is Spanish (the second most frequently spoken language in the world). That and a certain percentage need to learn Mandarin to develop relations with China."
I'm convinced that this phase of computer history is going to be remembered as the "UX Revolution." Seriously, even Linux distributions' GUIs have turned into iOS clones. Windows 10, while better than 8, is still a disaster because Microsoft is still convinced that people want to run a phone/tablet OS on their desktop PC.
It's the deadly combination of:
- Everything is a touch screen, so UI elements have to be massive and convey no meaning unless you know what the symbol means.
- Millions more "normal" people have computers in their pockets now, so even if "spotty nerds" want to use them, the UI can't be made functional because it has to be dumbed down for everyone.
I agree that just letting the developers do a user interface would probably leave us at slightly above the verbosity level of vi, and a complexity level of emacs, but there's a happy medium. Not everything needs to be rendered in a flat, featureless Jony Ive rounded rectangle style. Seriously, if people who are used to computers have to look at a user interface for more than a few seconds to figure out what performs an action, and where that action is located, than form has won over function.
I'd rather have an ugly, functional UI any day. AS/400 style green screens are hideously ugly and primitive, but they're laid out well, the intelligent use of color highlights important things, and they're easy to stare at for long periods of time. I'm absolutely sick of web pages and app screens that have bright white backgrounds and tiny light grey text, chosen simply because it's pretty.