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Comment by Turing_Machine | Hacker News Reader

The worst thing about our modern GUIs, IMO, is that they've basically brought UI evolution to a screeching halt.

I don't think we've even begun to develop optimal user interfaces, and we won't as long as the "common metaphor" idea holds sway.

Think what it would be like if we applied that idea to the real world, so (e.g.) hammers, can openers, toilets, and bulldozers all had to operate using a common set of widgets. It's hard to envision, but I would bet a very large sum of money that the result wouldn't be optimal for any of those jobs.

That's what we've done with computer UIs.

Unfortunately, I don't see any real way out of the trap.

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>Think what it would be like if we applied that idea to the real world, so (e.g.) hammers, can openers, toilets, and bulldozers all had to operate using a common set of widgets.

Only apps don't do that. Paint apps use brushes and canvases, spreadsheet apps use cell grids, music apps use notation views and piano rolls, writing apps use document screens, games use whatever invented controls and worlds, etc.

What is common is that a lot of stuff we do involves mere text and symbol manipulation (buying tickets, reading news, checking sports scores, entering customer data, etc). For those we use the same widgets, yes.

But in the real world we do build all kinds of stuff, from cars to boats, and from skyscrapers to bulldozers, to pinballs with nuts, bolts, screws, wires, glass panels, etc., too. A hammer is as useful for hanging a frame as it is for building a house.

"Paint apps use brushes and canvases"

No, they use skeuomorphic simulations of those things.

(edit, to expand a bit)

We have the capability to put anything on the screen that we can imagine, but we're not doing that. We're limiting ourselves to bad simulations of real-world tools. The "brushes" are just more of the same thinking that gave us "desktops", "file folders" and "trash cans". As others have noted, those things do make it easier for newbies to learn the system, and yeah, that's a point in its favor. It's just disappointing to me that we haven't come further than we have with respect to truly innovative interfaces.

You even see it in VR! You get the same menus, buttons, and whatnot, but, hey, now the components are rendered as high-resolution stereo images. Yay! I guess?

>No, they use skeuomorphic simulations of those things.

No, they don't. You don't paint moving some virtual drawn brush gizmo, taking to some "virtual water box" to wash it out, etc.

You paint moving a cursor (whether it has a brush icon is irrelevant and not skeuomorphic in the UI sense), and you control properties of the underlying line (color, spread, width etc) with some of them going far beyond what a real world brush can do.

>We have the capability to put anything on the screen that we can imagine, but we're not doing that.

That's because it's not convenient. Except if you have some cool new idea we haven't tried.

What are you proposing as an alternative to a button? Gestures? Voice commands?

Unfortunately, I don't see any real way out of the trap.

Some new device or application will introduce a new metaphor or technology that eventually trickles into existing software. Unfortunately, last time this happened that new tech was touchscreens, and I fear voice is next. These are both regressions in efficiency for lots of tasks.

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