5 ms·

Interface design is very, very important at this stage of evolution of computing, and I am disappointed in the overall direction taken by the industry in this r

Interface design is very, very important at this stage of evolution of computing, and I am disappointed in the overall direction taken by the industry in this regard. What we (desperately) need is work similar to the one that was done by Douglas Engelbart and still done by people like Alan Kay and Bret Victor. Instead we get things like Bootstrap, Metro, Material Design and now Fluent. (I am aware they are very different in scope, but their overall influence on real applications is quite similar: establishing certain wide-spread normative patterns.) Shallow and reactive things. They don't invent and define new ways of UI interactions and information presentation (examples from the past: clipping window, icon, hyperlink) and concentrate mostly on how things look. You might counter that this is the domain of MIT Media Lab rather than Microsoft and Google, but at this stage new UI concepts have to be adopted by entities with significant influence to be adopted at all.

whowouldathunk 9y ago
Fluent targets AR/VR too. Seems like it qualifies as inventive.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
I agree. To me the three most powerful pieces of software on a computer are a function, a string, and an array. You can do almost anything with these three applications, but the UIs for them is still utterly atrocious. Whoever designs the first easy-to-use version of this trip will unlock a massive amount of creative potential.
- oblio 9y ago
  It probably wouldn't register on your radar for "creativity" but the first killer app for PCs was an application of the "list" or "table": spreadsheets (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...). The spreadsheet was a major move forward for unlocking creative potential. A part of that probably brought us the financial crysis of 2007-2008, but nobody can complain that it wasn't creative :p
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Columns are nice but without functions they don't really rise to the level of arrays. And the UI for Excel functions is probably one of the worst interfaces for functions we have. Also Excel clouds the ergonomics of the lists and functions by duplicating common functionality in bespoke UI and littering it everywhere so it's not a very natural path from using a function through the UI to using it in another function. Also Excel columns add weird semantics by putting every column in the same rowspace. Also arrays have names. Columns are usually just numbered. In other words: yes, spreadsheets are the most useful end-user programming tool we have, but it has so much extra junk layered on top of it it's nigh unlearnable. And it's not a starting point, it's a dead end. An EUP environment built on a spreadsheet is a car built from horse parts. A well designed array UI would have the semantics of an actual modern array. Push, pop, each, etc. A well designed function UI the same. And both need to be presented clearly without distraction to count as a "good UI" in my book.
countryqt30 9y ago
Both Microsoft and Google both do a main part of their research AT the MIT Media Lab and the MIT earns 100s of millions by letting those company employees book research labs and rooms near MIT ;).
marcosdumay 9y ago
I have a very ambiguous opinion on that. Wild experimentation always washes off after some standard gets any big adoption. So, it's very natural that our interfaces are evolving slowly and iteratively. It's expected as otherwise things would break a lot. Yet, it's unimaginable how far we are from every concept in a interface being free to interact with every other concept on the ways that make sense. Current GUIs are incredibly brittle and underpowered. Why are we not getting a big revolution there?
alexkavon 9y ago
Counter point: if you're a giant software company, your focus is good looking UI and new UI concepts. Not just one. Making things shiny and instantly useable is good for your product. Implementing new UI for the sake of progress is silly. I'd argue that these software companies move forward when it makes sense for them and it will always be that way.
miguelrochefort 9y ago
I completely agree with you. I came to the conclusion that we need a completely new language, a new communication paradigm. We can't continue to build single-purpose apps for every single thing. We need a single interface that's general-purpose enough to let people communicate what would today take 1000 different apps (or 1 natural language). I believe that the future of UI will be a mix of task management concepts (to-dos, task dependencies, task delegation, timelines) and binary interaction (Akinator, Tinder, Mechanical Turk). Add a graph knowledge base, a blockchain, a network of trust, smart contracts and you're set. I've been trying to start a discussion about this for years, without success. If anyone is interested in discussing this space, I encourage you to let me know.
- petra 9y ago
  What connection does a blockchain has with interface design?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    None. That's an implementation detail.
- emerod 9y ago
  What you're describing sounds like the Apple, Google, or Facebook ecosystem. How is it different from any of those?
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Aren't those things voice/language processing aim to solve? That is to liberate the user from the device/interface and let ask for - as we typically do human to human - what then want and need? And voice to VR and many things change. Some, perhaps, not for the better. Welcome to The Matrix?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    Natural language interfaces are horrible. I don't know what people doing voice recognition and language processing are thinking. This is extremely short-sighted, and doomed to fail. I'm thinking about a completely new communication paradigm, one that's short of a brain interface.

whowouldathunk 9y ago

Fluent targets AR/VR too. Seems like it qualifies as inventive.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

I agree. To me the three most powerful pieces of software on a computer are a function, a string, and an array. You can do almost anything with these three applications, but the UIs for them is still utterly atrocious. Whoever designs the first easy-to-use version of this trip will unlock a massive amount of creative potential.

oblio 9y ago
It probably wouldn't register on your radar for "creativity" but the first killer app for PCs was an application of the "list" or "table": spreadsheets (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...). The spreadsheet was a major move forward for unlocking creative potential. A part of that probably brought us the financial crysis of 2007-2008, but nobody can complain that it wasn't creative :p
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Columns are nice but without functions they don't really rise to the level of arrays. And the UI for Excel functions is probably one of the worst interfaces for functions we have. Also Excel clouds the ergonomics of the lists and functions by duplicating common functionality in bespoke UI and littering it everywhere so it's not a very natural path from using a function through the UI to using it in another function. Also Excel columns add weird semantics by putting every column in the same rowspace. Also arrays have names. Columns are usually just numbered. In other words: yes, spreadsheets are the most useful end-user programming tool we have, but it has so much extra junk layered on top of it it's nigh unlearnable. And it's not a starting point, it's a dead end. An EUP environment built on a spreadsheet is a car built from horse parts. A well designed array UI would have the semantics of an actual modern array. Push, pop, each, etc. A well designed function UI the same. And both need to be presented clearly without distraction to count as a "good UI" in my book.

countryqt30 9y ago

Both Microsoft and Google both do a main part of their research AT the MIT Media Lab and the MIT earns 100s of millions by letting those company employees book research labs and rooms near MIT ;).

marcosdumay 9y ago

I have a very ambiguous opinion on that. Wild experimentation always washes off after some standard gets any big adoption. So, it's very natural that our interfaces are evolving slowly and iteratively. It's expected as otherwise things would break a lot. Yet, it's unimaginable how far we are from every concept in a interface being free to interact with every other concept on the ways that make sense. Current GUIs are incredibly brittle and underpowered. Why are we not getting a big revolution there?

alexkavon 9y ago

Counter point: if you're a giant software company, your focus is good looking UI and new UI concepts. Not just one. Making things shiny and instantly useable is good for your product. Implementing new UI for the sake of progress is silly. I'd argue that these software companies move forward when it makes sense for them and it will always be that way.

miguelrochefort 9y ago

I completely agree with you. I came to the conclusion that we need a completely new language, a new communication paradigm. We can't continue to build single-purpose apps for every single thing. We need a single interface that's general-purpose enough to let people communicate what would today take 1000 different apps (or 1 natural language). I believe that the future of UI will be a mix of task management concepts (to-dos, task dependencies, task delegation, timelines) and binary interaction (Akinator, Tinder, Mechanical Turk). Add a graph knowledge base, a blockchain, a network of trust, smart contracts and you're set. I've been trying to start a discussion about this for years, without success. If anyone is interested in discussing this space, I encourage you to let me know.

petra 9y ago
What connection does a blockchain has with interface design?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  None. That's an implementation detail.
emerod 9y ago
What you're describing sounds like the Apple, Google, or Facebook ecosystem. How is it different from any of those?
chiefalchemist 9y ago
Aren't those things voice/language processing aim to solve? That is to liberate the user from the device/interface and let ask for - as we typically do human to human - what then want and need? And voice to VR and many things change. Some, perhaps, not for the better. Welcome to The Matrix?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  Natural language interfaces are horrible. I don't know what people doing voice recognition and language processing are thinking. This is extremely short-sighted, and doomed to fail. I'm thinking about a completely new communication paradigm, one that's short of a brain interface.