The future of UI will be boring

From the article: "The fancy shmancy argument is that dominant design repels most attacks. There are lots of bad ideas that were adopted first, became dominant, and have been impossible to shake. The DVORAK vs. QWERTY keyboard debate is a canonical example. It doesn’t matter if DVORAK is actually 5x better that QWERTY, the cost of relearning is perceived to be prohibitive, so most people never have the motivation to try, and there are huge reinforcements of the status quo (e.g. people who teach typing classes). Metric system vs. English in the U.S. is another good example. A particularly retarded example of dominant design is electric plugs. Studying why the world has 50 different plugs and voltages explains much about resistance factors against innovation. Or world peace."

This is a actually a favorite nitpick of mine. I don't really buy the argument that established standards dominate even after they've been proven to be inferior. First of all, the Dvorak vs. Qwerty situation isn't as clear cut as it is commonly made out to be -- while there's lots of anecdotal evidence, the few independent studies (i.e. those not done by Dvorak himself) aren't very conclusive. At the very least they don't show a 5x improvement.

The cost of switching to the metric system likely isn't as great as commonly believed, and there's no harm in running both side-by-side for a while. There are many precedents for this from other countries. While as a European, I consider the imperial system to be clearly inferior, I think the real reason why the U.S. doesn't adopt it has more to do with emotional attachment and xenophobia than with cost. The point here is, if Americans genuinely consider the imperial system to be better, switching would not be an improvement.

The electric plug situation is rapidly improving, in part because of homogenization pressure, in part because electronic devices don't particularly care what kind of voltage you feed into them. (Be careful with adapter plugs and hairdryers though, you might start a fire if the voltage is too high.) Also, this is a case where none of the existing standards is inferior to any other, so it's not even an example of a bad design becoming dominant.

In short, my point is that if a new convention is clearly better, it's usually possible to switch gradually, and that this is usually done. The effect of "dominant design" is greatly exaggerated.

Interesting that he left out the iPhone. To me, that is the most recent big innovation in usability. Of course, it is a different form factor than the PC, and that is the point. There is not much reason for a radical change in interface if the form factor doesn't change.

The other big example is Wii, and now what Microsoft has been demoing in their Natal project (assuming it ships in the near future). In these cases, the key factor is that you are operating a device from a distance. That allows the use of a wider range of human motion in controlling the device, now that the technology to support it exists.

I suppose the lesson is, form factor and innovative interface design cannot be decoupled.

Good thread guys. Couple of things:

The specific rant was aimed mostly at desktop. There's lots of energy to move i-phonish UI to the desktop, but it will mostly fail there for ergonomic reasons.

Sci-fi movies are horrible predictors of future, especially when it comes to UI. Fun and inspiring which is good, but using it as something to copy is ridiculous.

The 3rd world argument is a good one. If people can skip past our desktops they dodge the dominant design issues. But then it also has to be cheap. Cell phones are a great story - cell phones are the first phones much of the world has ever had. Cell towers are cheaper than landlines.

> jorsh wrote: > I'm paying attention to the applications, > not the OS windows.

He's totally right, You rarely need a paradigm shift to achieve whatever it is you imagine the effect of your work to be. That was my point at the end.

-Scott (www.scottberkun,com)

Computers 30 years ago: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/c64/h/complete.jpg

Computers now: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/appl...

Sure, the basics are the same. However, nothing about these changes are "boring." I would argue we have nothing to worry about. In 5, 10, 15 years, we'll have some pretty cool gadgets to play around with.

Take a look at cell phones- everything is starting to use touch screens. Tablets are going to start becoming popular, and eventually that will seep into desktops and laptops.

Don't worry, we'll be fine.

This is something I've been thinking for ages; the future probably won't look like the scifi movie version of the future with holoscreens and voice recognition and gestures. Useful always beats cool in the long run, no matter how you market it.

Though I still believe there's a strong chance that some unforeseen UI innovation will appear and change the game.

While this is a wonderful article, there's a situation the OP failed to mention: country differences

Just a simple example: US has a wide usage of 1G mobile phones, then China has a huge 2G GSM market, now the US goes from 1G directly to 3G, China should prepare 4G now.

I think this cycle has not yet been facilitated in the current globalization, plus peer competition can invoke more innovations. It's like cold war without hostility.

Well, I'm working on a new UI/GUI applicable to any device, and HCI/BMI integration of it. It's not boring at all: usable, sci-fi like, Voice recon, etc. I can't disclose much beacuse it's a research project (NDA). Perhaps in the future I may succed to make it public.

@IsaacL: Well, future UIs will be like those on scifi movies, but with usability in mind. I mean a UI that don't let you do what you want to do, it's pretty useless.

fh wrote "In short, my point is that if a new convention is clearly better, it's usually possible to switch gradually, and that this is usually done."

I'd love to see any data at all about this. Or even a few not cherry picked examples.

You also wrote: "The electric plug situation is rapidly improving".

I have seen zero evidence for this. I've yet to travel to any other continent without this being a problem.

I'm looking forward to the time I can program/controll my computer using entirely voice commands and virtual 3d holographic typing

Boring? God I hope so. Classic MacOS had the right idea aesthetics-wise. Boring, clean, neutral grays. I'm paying attention to the applications, not the OS windows.

Excuse me, who is this douche and why do I care? I find it hard to believe that anyone who considers the semicolon "vestigial emoticon fodder" has written anything of much significance or value.