7 ms·

HUDS and GUIs: an inspiration resource site featuring Future User Interfaces

208 points by harporoeder 5y ago

sxp 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/FUI/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/r/FUI/top/?sort=top&t=all is another favorite of mine. If you want an excessively deep analysis of sci-fi UIs, I suggest https://scifiinterfaces.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/ On a related note, does anyone have good recommendations for real-world "power UIs"? I.e, computer user interfaces that have a steep learning curve but are extremely powerful once mastered. E.g, vi/emacs or one line bash scripts + *nix CLI programs. AutoCAD/Blender and other 3D modeling tools also have good UIs once you go through the pain of mastering them and learn how to use them with one hand on a keyboard and one hand on a mouse.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  Everything in that article can be done with css believe it or not.
  - smm11 5y ago
    Everything in that article can be done with Excel believe it or not.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    I don't believe you.
    - elevaet 5y ago
      Screenshot page, set background-image, done ;)
- ChadNauseam 5y ago
  > AutoCAD/Blender and other 3D modeling tools also have good UIs once you go through the pain of mastering them I'd like to add ZBrush and Houdini to this list. (Both of them are 3D modeling tools.) ZBrush is known for having an extremely unintuitive UI, but once you figure it out it actually all makes perfect sense and generally you wouldn't want it any other way. Houdini is weird because it's not very difficult for programmers to pick up, but it's very hard for everyone else. That's because it's literally a programming language for creating 3D models. As a Haskell fan I appreciate that the language is lazy, but aside from that it does leave something to be desired. That said, the HN crowd should be able to see why it's very powerful to create 3d models by programming them instead of by hand-manipulating a mesh (like you would in Blender or ZBrush). Ableton (music creation software) is also extremely powerful but difficult to learn. Lastly, it's not really a UI, but nix is a build system that's hard to learn but once you do learn it you can do things that would be very difficult in any other build system I know of.
- truffdog 5y ago
  i3/sway style tiling window managers
- jimmySixDOF 5y ago
  I think VR/AR/MR have the most new realestate in terms of power-UI because you are physically present within the interface. The best examples to me are VR & Art based [1] which let you create 3D objects in a 3D space or Paint like you would in front of an easle. The UI's range from grabbing a spraycan suspended in mid air to menue controls for spline points and camera views. Still evolving and no where near feature parity with established tools but I see this changing over time. [1] My Shortlist: OpenBrush, Gravity Sketch, ShapesXR, Vermillion, Vartiste, & Brushwork.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Audio and video editing software. Example: Cubase with TAL-U-No-LX synth emulator in front of it, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8M6-QOWEAQMgGl?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8M6-QOWEAQMgGl?format=jpg&name=...
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I'm going to quip about Eve Online, lol. Tons of information screens, but also 3rd party tooling. More serious software, it's probably investor software; you know the type, multiple screens of red / green flashing numbers, charts, and of course the Bloomberg terminal. These people play with millions under a button press.
cookiengineer 5y ago
Personally I think that the movie Oblivion had one of the best UIs of all time. Every element placed there was animated with such a detail to transporting meaning, and wasn't there just for the show effect as most other Sci-Fi UIs. [1] I wish this UI was reality. While I think Star Trek transported the idea of using touch screens everywhere, I don't think their UIs are practical, as all of them were static (except for the tablets, which only displayed texts). [1] https://gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX https://gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX
- jiehong 5y ago
  In Star Trek, if the bridge also was a holodeck, it probably would have been amazing. I’m not speaking about the Picard holograms in the new show, but the old mater-like from TNG (or maybe like the programmable mater from Discovery).
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I believe Discovery in its later season uses more err, dynamic material based interfaces (and ships), like nanomachines.
  - VaxWithSex 5y ago
    Imagine this: Picard goes to the holobridge. Computer, give me flight controls in the style of the enterprise-D Computer … … … Picard: Ah, right at home!
    - skocznymroczny 5y ago
      Reminds me of Lt. Barclay, when he was "infected" by the alien probe. He found the existing computer interfaces inefficient so he went to the holodeck to create more efficient ones. "Tie both consoles into the Enterprise main computer core utilizing neural-scan interface." "There is no such device on file. " "No problem, here's how you build it. "
      - speed_spread 5y ago
danybittel 5y ago
These aren't "Future User Interfaces". They are UI's to look good on Film, appearing fancy and futuristic. Take a hologram for example, great to have a person and the thing they manipulate in the same shot. Actually working on a hologram, not so great. Often they will have very little information on a huge surface.. while real user interfaces need to convey as much information on as little surface as possible. They probably have as little value for a UI designer as a car chase in a film for a regular driver.
- epolanski 5y ago
  I agree. I sometimes try to focus on futuristic UIs from 60s/70s shows and they are always so clean to understand and focus on text. 2001: Space Odissey is one such example: https://ilikeinterfaces.com/?s=2001 https://ilikeinterfaces.com/?s=2001
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  The same could be said of touch screens until the first iPod touch. I wouldn't want diagnostic data, system performance data, audio visualization or anything like that in a holographic display. But an interactive 3d holographic display would be fantastic for mapping information with topographical data, or anything mapping to the real world. The most intuitive environment is the real world which is three dimensional, tactile and responsive, so representing that abstractly can only be done fully granularly and intuitively in a 3 dimensional environment. Trying to do other things in three dimensions just doesn't make a lot of sense and usually you're right, they're selling something unnecessary and counterproductive.
  - danybittel 5y ago
    But touch screens are a step back from keyboard / pen / mouse. They have it's use if neither of those are easily available. I'm not sold on holographic displays at all. We've been displaying 3 dimensional data on 2 dimensional planes ever since after the middle ages. It works very well. Arguably better, because it let's the user (or the one presenting) "collapse" one dimension. It is also easier to manipulate, you only turn the object. On a holographic display, you have to turn your head and turn the object. Even worse, if multiple persons are looking at it, you don't see the same thing.
toomanybeersies 5y ago
I wonder how many of these UIs are directly inspired by Minority Report?
aww_dang 5y ago
I always thought of the acronym FUI as "fake user interface", like the ads and pop ups which mimicked the desktop environment's UI.
productceo 5y ago
Good idea! Thanks for organizing this information.
mike_hearn 5y ago
A few observations: - Film "FUIs" are almost invariably dark these days. I wonder to what extent the designers are influenced by the dark modes in the tools they use. - Most of them pack enormous amounts of stuff in with tiny fonts. Probably to stop the viewer from getting distracted trying to read stuff. But there seems to be an ambient assumption that 'futuristic' stuff is way more info-packed than today's UIs are - where does that come from? - Most of them over-use transparency to absurd degrees. For holograms where you want to see the actor's face it makes sense but it appears even in shots where no actors are visible, e.g. https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/florida-hospital-ui https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/florida-hospital-ui - A typical film FUI has a lot of animated data visualizations, but real UI almost never does. Is this because such visualizations are useless clutter or because film makers have better tools for creating them than actual programmers do? The difference between "actual" FUI and film FUI is best illustrated by the concept videos produced by engineering/tech firms: - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/surface-hub2 https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/surface-hub2 - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2017/3/21/bmw-inside-future-concept https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2017/3/21/bmw-inside-future... - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2015/10/18/lg-oled https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2015/10/18/lg-oled We see way less detail and much more light-mode stuff. I guess I'm curious how much of the gap we see between real UI and stylized/imagined UI is to do with lack of tooling, different design fashions and the different needs of film UI.
- greggsy 5y ago
  > … assumption that 'futuristic' stuff is way more info-packed than today's UIs are - where does that come from? Text adds texture, and it tell also tells the audience that our hyper-aware and very clever protagonist is seeking and scanning the text for some sort of data that us normie-non-future people wouldn’t understand. At the end of the day, it’s just a creative trope that consistently pleases the audience. It looks cool. As for the source, you could go all the way back to Terminator or TRON, and as recent(ish) as The Matrix, but I think Ghost in the Shell has been most influential.
- poulpy123 5y ago
  > - Film "FUIs" are almost invariably dark these days. I wonder to what extent the designers are influenced by the dark modes in the tools they use. The overall color tone of the recent movies using FUIs seems also pretty dark
qwerty456127 5y ago
Why are real GUIs not like this?
- ape4 5y ago
  Because they're silly ;)
- neoberg 5y ago
  Because real GUIs are designed to be useful.
- mromanuk 5y ago
  There was a trend if I remember correctly, over the 2000~2005 period. Back then, there was some futuristic UIs like gkrellm, some audio players like winamp and a few themes for Windows to make it look cooler.
- hurricanesugar 5y ago
  Some are. Look at the similarities between UIs in these movies and today’s Space X shuttle navigation UI: https://www.shanemielke.com/work/spacex/crew-dragon-displays/ https://www.shanemielke.com/work/spacex/crew-dragon-displays...
kkfx 5y ago
The issue with those fictional UIs is that who design them do not design to serve a real purpose, but to impress the public. It's like a car cockpit designed by someone who have nothing more than a limited and distorted idea about how cars are driven to impress someone who do not know how to drive either. From a techie point point of view those UIs are just garbage: full of irrelevant information, confusing, completely poor of controls and interactive effectiveness. People using them act as ignorant who can't really do nothing but just touching around hoping something will happen in the direction they want to go to. Even filmmakers should remember a thing: the purpose of a UI is human-device interaction, not human-device-driven-decision-making. I understand they have just to please their public and those who pay them money (witch means also pushing the public toward certain behaviors, commercially and politically nice for some film financier) but if a movie is made ONLY with those principles appeal of the movie will lower and lower, and that's probably why fan of "old" movies grow and grow every days... A future UI IMVHO? Look back at Xerox UIs like http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf or some experiments like SUNws PostScript Pizza tool. A document interactive UI not for passive content consumption or at maximum content selection like modern web services UIs but a UI for production and consumption at the same level without any perceived difference between the two modes, like I write as I read, I execute as I write etc. Emacs/org-mode is one the most modern UI we have alive, modern Notebook UIs are limited archaic UIs that can offer far less than Emacs but a bit more modern stuff (like proper image/video integration to a certain less bad extent), the rest? Is so advanced to be behind the early history of computer's UI, a bit advanced than the Eniac UI, but given the leap between the two Eniac in theory was more advanced anyway, just featuring a raw UI for tech limits of it's time.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  > the purpose of a UI is human-device interaction That's not the purpose of a film ui though. Its purpose is a lot closer to that of a prop: it can convey information about the plot (ACCESS DENIED), be part of character development (fluid mastery of a complex tool), convey setting & tone (metal and cracked glass screen implies something different than flowing holograms). The thing it is not for is an actual person to use as a tool to solve a problem in real space. It's not inherently a worse prop because it can't be used that way. Just as a prop gun that can't fire is a shitty gun, but a better prop for that very reason. Filmmakers should study real use of UIs so they understand how better to use that prop to convey their meaning to the audience. But they shouldn't pursue verisimilitude for its own sake. A prop gun that the audience can tell wouldn't be able to fire conveys a very different meaning to one that looks ready to go. Filmmakers should be able to ensure they're conveying the information they think they are, but the rest is artistic choice.
open-source-ux 5y ago
I think futuristic computer UIs in TV and films before computer graphics would make for a fascinating topic. For example, the computer UI in the BBC TV series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy deserves a mention. The low-budget series was broadcast in 1981 - a time when computer graphics were limited and not widespread in TV and film. All the "computer graphics" were hand animated to simulate a computer display. The "computer" graphics still stands up brilliantly more than 40 years later: A clip: https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=126 https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=126
tacticaldev 5y ago
Let's not forget the scene from Jurassic Park where the young female uses FSN to navigate a unix file system to save the day. "I know this" https://youtu.be/dxIPcbmo1_U https://youtu.be/dxIPcbmo1_U
btbuildem 5y ago
In my mind, The Expanse did a fantastic job with their UIs. One of the things that stood out for me was the integration between handheld and stationary devices -- for example, finding some information via personal mobile, then sharing it with others by "swiping" it onto a large stationary screen. You can see that a lot of thought went into how the interactions would look like -- a lot more than usual, I'd say. Or even.. a lot more than in many actual software products! It feels like they considered it as more than just eye candy. The way information is shared / communication happens in that envisioned world seems very realistic and complete. As someone who often designs user interfaces, I hold this show as one of the recent high-water marks for How To Do Things Well.
DustinBrett 5y ago
Gotta mention https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ then also as I love checking them out.
anderspitman 5y ago
I hope for a future with more physical buttons. Touchscreens et al are great for developers but pretty terrible for large classes of HCI problems.
thom 5y ago
It's great that these things are getting more and more realistic and less handwavy. You still see the occasional rogue AI scrolling WordPress source code on a screen but it's always a delight when little details have love and thought put into them. I even know a guy who was a chess consultant on a Hollywood film recently, to ensure they used realistic positions that weren't embarrassing on close inspection (scenes got cut though, sadly).
mLuby 5y ago
There are very few games that use a CLI as the primary user interaction. Duskers (2016) is one such game: you type commands into a terminal to direct dog-sized rovers as they explore derelict spaceships. It might be unique among CLI games in that you can alias chains of commands together to create a new command (macro). For example there is no "begin" command in the game. `begin=open a1; navigate 1 2 a1; generator 2; status 1;` causes the airlock 1 (always between your ship and the derelict) to open, rovers 1 and 2 to navigate through airlock 1 to whatever room is on the other side, then for rover 2 to try to power on the room while rover 1 gives you the status of the room. The alias feature means that when the gameplay starts feeling repetitive, you can create a command to do more of that work for you. More from the developer on aliases in the game: https://steamcommunity.com/app/254320/discussions/0/528398719798517074/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/254320/discussions/0/52839871....
rawoke083600 5y ago
Looks really good ! Being a programmer and a terrible artist ! I often have to "steal"(i.e inspired) by sites like this ! Another good one is Game UI Databases [0] [0] https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ https://www.gameuidatabase.com/
Already__Taken 5y ago
Is there a tool the make these UI's with or is it all just custom after effects and labour?
yencabulator 5y ago
Obligatory links: https://futureinterface.tumblr.com/ https://futureinterface.tumblr.com/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/

208 points by harporoeder 5y ago

sxp 5y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/FUI/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/r/FUI/top/?sort=top&t=all is another favorite of mine. If you want an excessively deep analysis of sci-fi UIs, I suggest https://scifiinterfaces.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/ On a related note, does anyone have good recommendations for real-world "power UIs"? I.e, computer user interfaces that have a steep learning curve but are extremely powerful once mastered. E.g, vi/emacs or one line bash scripts + *nix CLI programs. AutoCAD/Blender and other 3D modeling tools also have good UIs once you go through the pain of mastering them and learn how to use them with one hand on a keyboard and one hand on a mouse.

crate_barre 5y ago
Everything in that article can be done with css believe it or not.
- smm11 5y ago
  Everything in that article can be done with Excel believe it or not.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  I don't believe you.
  - elevaet 5y ago
    Screenshot page, set background-image, done ;)
ChadNauseam 5y ago
> AutoCAD/Blender and other 3D modeling tools also have good UIs once you go through the pain of mastering them I'd like to add ZBrush and Houdini to this list. (Both of them are 3D modeling tools.) ZBrush is known for having an extremely unintuitive UI, but once you figure it out it actually all makes perfect sense and generally you wouldn't want it any other way. Houdini is weird because it's not very difficult for programmers to pick up, but it's very hard for everyone else. That's because it's literally a programming language for creating 3D models. As a Haskell fan I appreciate that the language is lazy, but aside from that it does leave something to be desired. That said, the HN crowd should be able to see why it's very powerful to create 3d models by programming them instead of by hand-manipulating a mesh (like you would in Blender or ZBrush). Ableton (music creation software) is also extremely powerful but difficult to learn. Lastly, it's not really a UI, but nix is a build system that's hard to learn but once you do learn it you can do things that would be very difficult in any other build system I know of.
truffdog 5y ago
i3/sway style tiling window managers
jimmySixDOF 5y ago
I think VR/AR/MR have the most new realestate in terms of power-UI because you are physically present within the interface. The best examples to me are VR & Art based [1] which let you create 3D objects in a 3D space or Paint like you would in front of an easle. The UI's range from grabbing a spraycan suspended in mid air to menue controls for spline points and camera views. Still evolving and no where near feature parity with established tools but I see this changing over time. [1] My Shortlist: OpenBrush, Gravity Sketch, ShapesXR, Vermillion, Vartiste, & Brushwork.
dmitriid 5y ago
Audio and video editing software. Example: Cubase with TAL-U-No-LX synth emulator in front of it, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8M6-QOWEAQMgGl?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8M6-QOWEAQMgGl?format=jpg&name=...
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I'm going to quip about Eve Online, lol. Tons of information screens, but also 3rd party tooling. More serious software, it's probably investor software; you know the type, multiple screens of red / green flashing numbers, charts, and of course the Bloomberg terminal. These people play with millions under a button press.

cookiengineer 5y ago

Personally I think that the movie Oblivion had one of the best UIs of all time. Every element placed there was animated with such a detail to transporting meaning, and wasn't there just for the show effect as most other Sci-Fi UIs. [1] I wish this UI was reality. While I think Star Trek transported the idea of using touch screens everywhere, I don't think their UIs are practical, as all of them were static (except for the tablets, which only displayed texts). [1] https://gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX https://gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX

jiehong 5y ago
In Star Trek, if the bridge also was a holodeck, it probably would have been amazing. I’m not speaking about the Picard holograms in the new show, but the old mater-like from TNG (or maybe like the programmable mater from Discovery).
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I believe Discovery in its later season uses more err, dynamic material based interfaces (and ships), like nanomachines.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  Imagine this: Picard goes to the holobridge. Computer, give me flight controls in the style of the enterprise-D Computer … … … Picard: Ah, right at home!
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    Reminds me of Lt. Barclay, when he was "infected" by the alien probe. He found the existing computer interfaces inefficient so he went to the holodeck to create more efficient ones. "Tie both consoles into the Enterprise main computer core utilizing neural-scan interface." "There is no such device on file. " "No problem, here's how you build it. "
    - speed_spread 5y ago

danybittel 5y ago

These aren't "Future User Interfaces". They are UI's to look good on Film, appearing fancy and futuristic. Take a hologram for example, great to have a person and the thing they manipulate in the same shot. Actually working on a hologram, not so great. Often they will have very little information on a huge surface.. while real user interfaces need to convey as much information on as little surface as possible. They probably have as little value for a UI designer as a car chase in a film for a regular driver.

epolanski 5y ago
I agree. I sometimes try to focus on futuristic UIs from 60s/70s shows and they are always so clean to understand and focus on text. 2001: Space Odissey is one such example: https://ilikeinterfaces.com/?s=2001 https://ilikeinterfaces.com/?s=2001
betwixthewires 5y ago
The same could be said of touch screens until the first iPod touch. I wouldn't want diagnostic data, system performance data, audio visualization or anything like that in a holographic display. But an interactive 3d holographic display would be fantastic for mapping information with topographical data, or anything mapping to the real world. The most intuitive environment is the real world which is three dimensional, tactile and responsive, so representing that abstractly can only be done fully granularly and intuitively in a 3 dimensional environment. Trying to do other things in three dimensions just doesn't make a lot of sense and usually you're right, they're selling something unnecessary and counterproductive.
- danybittel 5y ago
  But touch screens are a step back from keyboard / pen / mouse. They have it's use if neither of those are easily available. I'm not sold on holographic displays at all. We've been displaying 3 dimensional data on 2 dimensional planes ever since after the middle ages. It works very well. Arguably better, because it let's the user (or the one presenting) "collapse" one dimension. It is also easier to manipulate, you only turn the object. On a holographic display, you have to turn your head and turn the object. Even worse, if multiple persons are looking at it, you don't see the same thing.

toomanybeersies 5y ago

I wonder how many of these UIs are directly inspired by Minority Report?

aww_dang 5y ago

I always thought of the acronym FUI as "fake user interface", like the ads and pop ups which mimicked the desktop environment's UI.

productceo 5y ago

Good idea! Thanks for organizing this information.

mike_hearn 5y ago

A few observations: - Film "FUIs" are almost invariably dark these days. I wonder to what extent the designers are influenced by the dark modes in the tools they use. - Most of them pack enormous amounts of stuff in with tiny fonts. Probably to stop the viewer from getting distracted trying to read stuff. But there seems to be an ambient assumption that 'futuristic' stuff is way more info-packed than today's UIs are - where does that come from? - Most of them over-use transparency to absurd degrees. For holograms where you want to see the actor's face it makes sense but it appears even in shots where no actors are visible, e.g. https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/florida-hospital-ui https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/florida-hospital-ui - A typical film FUI has a lot of animated data visualizations, but real UI almost never does. Is this because such visualizations are useless clutter or because film makers have better tools for creating them than actual programmers do? The difference between "actual" FUI and film FUI is best illustrated by the concept videos produced by engineering/tech firms: - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/surface-hub2 https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2018/surface-hub2 - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2017/3/21/bmw-inside-future-concept https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2017/3/21/bmw-inside-future... - https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2015/10/18/lg-oled https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2015/10/18/lg-oled We see way less detail and much more light-mode stuff. I guess I'm curious how much of the gap we see between real UI and stylized/imagined UI is to do with lack of tooling, different design fashions and the different needs of film UI.

greggsy 5y ago
> … assumption that 'futuristic' stuff is way more info-packed than today's UIs are - where does that come from? Text adds texture, and it tell also tells the audience that our hyper-aware and very clever protagonist is seeking and scanning the text for some sort of data that us normie-non-future people wouldn’t understand. At the end of the day, it’s just a creative trope that consistently pleases the audience. It looks cool. As for the source, you could go all the way back to Terminator or TRON, and as recent(ish) as The Matrix, but I think Ghost in the Shell has been most influential.
poulpy123 5y ago
> - Film "FUIs" are almost invariably dark these days. I wonder to what extent the designers are influenced by the dark modes in the tools they use. The overall color tone of the recent movies using FUIs seems also pretty dark

qwerty456127 5y ago

Why are real GUIs not like this?

ape4 5y ago
Because they're silly ;)
neoberg 5y ago
Because real GUIs are designed to be useful.
mromanuk 5y ago
There was a trend if I remember correctly, over the 2000~2005 period. Back then, there was some futuristic UIs like gkrellm, some audio players like winamp and a few themes for Windows to make it look cooler.
hurricanesugar 5y ago
Some are. Look at the similarities between UIs in these movies and today’s Space X shuttle navigation UI: https://www.shanemielke.com/work/spacex/crew-dragon-displays/ https://www.shanemielke.com/work/spacex/crew-dragon-displays...

kkfx 5y ago

The issue with those fictional UIs is that who design them do not design to serve a real purpose, but to impress the public. It's like a car cockpit designed by someone who have nothing more than a limited and distorted idea about how cars are driven to impress someone who do not know how to drive either. From a techie point point of view those UIs are just garbage: full of irrelevant information, confusing, completely poor of controls and interactive effectiveness. People using them act as ignorant who can't really do nothing but just touching around hoping something will happen in the direction they want to go to. Even filmmakers should remember a thing: the purpose of a UI is human-device interaction, not human-device-driven-decision-making. I understand they have just to please their public and those who pay them money (witch means also pushing the public toward certain behaviors, commercially and politically nice for some film financier) but if a movie is made ONLY with those principles appeal of the movie will lower and lower, and that's probably why fan of "old" movies grow and grow every days... A future UI IMVHO? Look back at Xerox UIs like http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf or some experiments like SUNws PostScript Pizza tool. A document interactive UI not for passive content consumption or at maximum content selection like modern web services UIs but a UI for production and consumption at the same level without any perceived difference between the two modes, like I write as I read, I execute as I write etc. Emacs/org-mode is one the most modern UI we have alive, modern Notebook UIs are limited archaic UIs that can offer far less than Emacs but a bit more modern stuff (like proper image/video integration to a certain less bad extent), the rest? Is so advanced to be behind the early history of computer's UI, a bit advanced than the Eniac UI, but given the leap between the two Eniac in theory was more advanced anyway, just featuring a raw UI for tech limits of it's time.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
> the purpose of a UI is human-device interaction That's not the purpose of a film ui though. Its purpose is a lot closer to that of a prop: it can convey information about the plot (ACCESS DENIED), be part of character development (fluid mastery of a complex tool), convey setting & tone (metal and cracked glass screen implies something different than flowing holograms). The thing it is not for is an actual person to use as a tool to solve a problem in real space. It's not inherently a worse prop because it can't be used that way. Just as a prop gun that can't fire is a shitty gun, but a better prop for that very reason. Filmmakers should study real use of UIs so they understand how better to use that prop to convey their meaning to the audience. But they shouldn't pursue verisimilitude for its own sake. A prop gun that the audience can tell wouldn't be able to fire conveys a very different meaning to one that looks ready to go. Filmmakers should be able to ensure they're conveying the information they think they are, but the rest is artistic choice.

open-source-ux 5y ago

I think futuristic computer UIs in TV and films before computer graphics would make for a fascinating topic. For example, the computer UI in the BBC TV series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy deserves a mention. The low-budget series was broadcast in 1981 - a time when computer graphics were limited and not widespread in TV and film. All the "computer graphics" were hand animated to simulate a computer display. The "computer" graphics still stands up brilliantly more than 40 years later: A clip: https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=126 https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=126

tacticaldev 5y ago

Let's not forget the scene from Jurassic Park where the young female uses FSN to navigate a unix file system to save the day. "I know this" https://youtu.be/dxIPcbmo1_U https://youtu.be/dxIPcbmo1_U

btbuildem 5y ago

In my mind, The Expanse did a fantastic job with their UIs. One of the things that stood out for me was the integration between handheld and stationary devices -- for example, finding some information via personal mobile, then sharing it with others by "swiping" it onto a large stationary screen. You can see that a lot of thought went into how the interactions would look like -- a lot more than usual, I'd say. Or even.. a lot more than in many actual software products! It feels like they considered it as more than just eye candy. The way information is shared / communication happens in that envisioned world seems very realistic and complete. As someone who often designs user interfaces, I hold this show as one of the recent high-water marks for How To Do Things Well.

DustinBrett 5y ago

Gotta mention https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ then also as I love checking them out.

anderspitman 5y ago

I hope for a future with more physical buttons. Touchscreens et al are great for developers but pretty terrible for large classes of HCI problems.

thom 5y ago

It's great that these things are getting more and more realistic and less handwavy. You still see the occasional rogue AI scrolling WordPress source code on a screen but it's always a delight when little details have love and thought put into them. I even know a guy who was a chess consultant on a Hollywood film recently, to ensure they used realistic positions that weren't embarrassing on close inspection (scenes got cut though, sadly).

mLuby 5y ago

There are very few games that use a CLI as the primary user interaction. Duskers (2016) is one such game: you type commands into a terminal to direct dog-sized rovers as they explore derelict spaceships. It might be unique among CLI games in that you can alias chains of commands together to create a new command (macro). For example there is no "begin" command in the game. `begin=open a1; navigate 1 2 a1; generator 2; status 1;` causes the airlock 1 (always between your ship and the derelict) to open, rovers 1 and 2 to navigate through airlock 1 to whatever room is on the other side, then for rover 2 to try to power on the room while rover 1 gives you the status of the room. The alias feature means that when the gameplay starts feeling repetitive, you can create a command to do more of that work for you. More from the developer on aliases in the game: https://steamcommunity.com/app/254320/discussions/0/528398719798517074/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/254320/discussions/0/52839871....

rawoke083600 5y ago

Looks really good ! Being a programmer and a terrible artist ! I often have to "steal"(i.e inspired) by sites like this ! Another good one is Game UI Databases [0] [0] https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ https://www.gameuidatabase.com/

Already__Taken 5y ago

Is there a tool the make these UI's with or is it all just custom after effects and labour?

yencabulator 5y ago

Obligatory links: https://futureinterface.tumblr.com/ https://futureinterface.tumblr.com/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://www.pushing-pixels.org/fui/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.com/