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Great interview. The thought that stands out for me is the repeated assertion that fantasy UIs must serve the narrative first. That's analogous to the way a lot
by mpbm 10y ago
Great interview. The thought that stands out for me is the repeated assertion that fantasy UIs must serve the narrative first. That's analogous to the way a lot of people design UIs for real products in that they tell "user stories."
However, there will always be tension between that narrative-first approach and the real world where narratives don't exist. A real user, trying to use a real interface, just needs it to work. There's no audience, no dramatic tension, no character arc, etc. It just serves their needs in the moment or it doesn't.
In a story, the fantasy UI really is a pixel-deep metaphor substituting for the technological capabilities available to the characters. "Access denied" isn't really an interface, it's a visual way to communicate a complex plot point, just like all of the other crafted visuals in the movie. Nobody ever has to puzzle over a bad interface for the same reason nobody ever has to go to the bathroom.
But real UIs are more than one pixel deep. They're the Rosetta stone that translates between human thought and machine logic.
So when Minority Report makes up a gesture-based interface it's because they have to show the audience something plausible that they've never seen before. However, when a designer makes a real gesture-based interface it's because there's something their users can't do with the interface they're used to.
- wtbob 10y ago> However, when a designer makes a real gesture-based interface it's because there's something their users can't do with the interface they're used to. You're right when the designer is good. A bad designer might make a real gesture-based interface just because he saw Minority Report and thought that it was cool.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThere aren't many good designers working today (or maybe their work is being hindered in companies). If you look at contemporary UIs, they're shallow. Optimized for looking nice and selling things, instead of being ergonomic and giving users efficient ways to achieve their goals.
- mpbm 10y agoHaha, yeah, I actually rewrote that sentence a couple times because I was trying to phrase it in a way that wasn't wrong, but also got me out of having to address tangential topics like exploration, creativity, and art.
- jrcii 10y ago> nobody ever has to go to the bathroom My favorite movie of all time is called Stranger Than Paradise by a director named Jim Jarmusch, in part because of its original treatment of these issues. The film is peppered with subtle little moments where, for example, a kitchen cabinet doesn't close correctly, or someone doesn't hear the person they're talking to correctly and asks them to repeat themselves.
- mpbm 10y agoNeat. Kind of like how there's a whole website tvtropes.com devoted to collecting examples of all the different shortcuts used to tell stories. After a while, the trends in the material become interesting in their own right. Someone who's seen a lot of movies will see that something went wrong and wonder if it's a joke intentionally poking fun at the movie structure itself. Someone who hasn't seen a lot of movies probably won't even notice. I read somewhere that when an isolated tribe in Africa was shown pictures and asked to comment on them it took the researchers a while to figure out that the people weren't interpreting the pictures as representations of other things, but as flat, abstract blobs of colors. They literally didn't have enough experience with photographs to use them correctly. Whereas someone with tons of experience can intentionally misuse photographs to communicate one a different level. Bo Burnham's standup special has some meta jokes like this. I won't spoil them in case you haven't seen it yet.