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Comment by danybittel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

They're a step back only in terms of raw information representation and manipulation. They're fantastic for media interaction. If you're dealing with text and images, separating out the display and inputs makes sense. Id say the same thing for interactive environments like video games this holds true as well. If you're dealing with video or music players, it's added complexity.

A map on a paper does have the advantage of simpler interaction and canonical representation regardless of perspective, but it does that by sacrificing granularity. You can look at one map at a time, you can't zoom in, you can't change angles, all you can do is switch to a different map. A map of the solar system for example would benefit from three dimensions, and you can represent more abstract information as well such as orbital paths.

There isn't one UX/UI that is above the rest. They all have their use cases. I think people are trying to cram the wrong things into the wrong presentation/interaction model and it leads to frustration. There's a reason nobody writes code on a smartphone, there's a reason social media exploded when smartphones became commonplace. Nobody wants to use metaverse to search something online, but people want a 3d interactive environment when playing a game. There's a situation for everything, the trick is figuring out what fits best where.

Touchscreens offer increased flexibility and allow to update interfaces with little cost, but they offer almost no physical feedback.

We are used to (see brains and fingers) feeling complex shapes when touching things, but now all we have is occasional taptic vibration.

Holos and AR suffer from similar issue, they are a natural extension of touchscreens missing a crucial element from interfaces of the past.

But the interfaces were always an abstraction, your mind had to learn a different way to interact with something regardless. The tactile feedback is somewhat overstated IMO, you know that what you're feeling and what you're doing aren't directly related, unlike manipulating a Rubik's cube or something. It's good to have that, it helps with an interface, but it doesn't have to be the same as a keyboard just like a keyboard doesn't have to be the same as arranging letter blocks on a table. Touching what you're trying to manipulate, such as on a touchscreen, is more intuitive, but that's what makes it less powerful for complex tasks; you want your abstract interface to enable you to manipulate more than just what you're seeing in front of you, a keyboard does that, a touch screen does not.

IMO the more varied the sensory input we receive from an interface the better (higher information throughput, more diverse engagement of the mind, fine motor skills, etc. etc.), and satisfaction with touch taken away and being limited almost exclusively to sight is to some degree Stockholm syndrome.

We gained something, but we also lost something and hopefully we will not settle for that. I am looking forwards to tactile interfaces, whatever new tech will make it possible.

What are the functional differences in display (not input) between an actual 3D display and a 3D object projected onto a 2D display? The only two I can think of are first, being able to use our eyes’ actual depth perception ability instead of the brain imagining it, and second, being able to move your head to get perspective.

What are the differences in input? I can think of being able to touch the display more directly. The world is indeed tactile, and I hope such a display would be, too, instead of touching air. No matter how reactive the display is, touching air would not be the same as touching real objects.

The problem is that all of these “advantages” require physical movement: moving your hands, arms, and head. Doing this for creative work, which takes a lot of time, would be exhausting. There is a reason why touch screens on desktop computers are not common, even though we have the technology. Your arms get tired.

A trackball mouse is a way, way more effective 3D modeling tool than directly manipulating items with your hands. You can work a lot quicker and with a lot less movement.

“ Doing this for creative work, which takes a lot of time, would be exhausting. There is a reason why touch screens on desktop computers are not common, even though we have the technology. Your arms get tired.”

With the notable exception of illustration.

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

Right, they are props made to look stylish and set the scene. They aren't really useful designs because they don't have to actually work in the real world. They're the equivalent of those scrolling streams of random code or terminal output you see computer hackers in movies working with.

Hmm, maybe I should make a "Future Code Gallery" with snippets of code from movies.

https://moviecode.tumblr.com/

There is actually a functional purpose to futuristic UIs in film which is to help drive the story. For example, in Star Trek if a ship is damaged the UI will go red and start flashing to help convey to the audience that something really bad happened. One of the newer Star Wars movie did something similar to show an entire fleet of ships being wiped out.

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