« | Main | Reaction to a Post-Modern, Marxist-Existential Era »
October 11, 2005
Today, an ITP alum who now works for Microsoft spoke. She currently directs the interface design team for Windows - Longhorn. Prior to that, she worked in the social media research department. I was interested in how her career as an architect (she studied at Cornel, and worked in the field for a number of years before attending ITP) morphed into the field of Interface Design. Her talk jupstarted quite a number of ideas and inspirations, got the ball rolling, if you will.
She spoke on object visualization - this covers the broad field of files, locations, users, etc. I feel that the future lies in textual or vocal search entry with a visual hybrid of spatially located icons and tree-structured heirarchies. This would allow for a wider variaety of physical interfaces - and pave the road for the development of new, unthought of input devices. The keyboard and mouse of today are gross bastardizations of expressionary tools.
Beyond that, I am visualizing a new OS Interface that looks more like the window of an RPG. I really believe that the cliche Japanese aesthetic of space be carefully implemented. Hiding is really very important to minimize confusion. Clarity as well as Access are two extremely important considerations in interface design. Users must be able to intuitively grasp the situation or they will get frustrated and give up. This concept seems simple, but engineering with these in mind is exceedingly difficult. The user base must be accounted for. The speaker (if you can't tell, I don't remember her name) spoke at length on accesibility. She made it clear that the median user base couldnt handle new (read: better, more intuitive, more accesable) design. But that is the fault of past designers. The interface designers of yesterday forced the multitude users to learn the system. Windows is the way interfaces should be designed because it is.
The lecturer had some interesting things to say regarding Universal Input. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it is merely technology allowing for vernacular. An example:
You want to send an email. You type (or speak) "send email to alex@alex.com with the subject "hello" that says "hollar"
The software would then interpret this and complete the task without requiring any standardized syntax. This would allow for accents, misspellings, slang, etc. I am convinced that this can all be done with not-to complex organic ai algorithms - basically acting as a human. How hard can it be? Thought is just a bunch of electronic explosions in the brain, no?
This also ties in with Natrual Language Input - think Chinese/Japanese characters. The current input paradigm doesn't allow for this type of interface. And thats ridiculous - and the most simple, arguable. The characters are built from intuitive parts...
And if you are wondering - YES, I did get a sneak-peak at Longhorn. And I must say... Ho Hum. Its just Tiger with the stupid Start menu. Windows really does have a great paradigm - "CLICK CLICK CLICK. Lets hide everything useful under at the very least 2 layers - or else crowd the desktop with countless icons."
I (along with many others) was dissapointed in that there was little innovation present in terms of social networking. The lecturers excuse was "lets solve the interface issues for the computer user on the computer and worry about that stuff later." Bullshit. More and more, the computer is becoming a vehicle for cyberspace. I'm really excited about Second life and things of that nature as they bring us closer to the worlds visualized by Gibson and the other prophets of future networking (purposefully did not say cyberspace, technology etc.). Longhorn basically ignores the internet, networking capabilities, object relationship visualization. Guess this is a long-winded way of saying I won't be running to BestBuy to cop a new IBM as soon as the newest Windows OS drops.
I am pretty sick of the word 'organic.' Please un-buzz-word this word. Thanks.
more later...
Posted by alex at October 11, 2005 10:35 PM