The best interface is no interface
theverge.com
theverge.com
Take the author's critical example of a smartphone app to unlock your car. Yes, that's terrible. Now, let's look at the actual interface - the key. I've owned two Subarus now. I loved the keyless entry device on my 1999 Outback. I feel the keyless entry on my 2010 Forester was a step backwards. I accidentally trigger it when I don't want to. It's unreliable, often taking several presses to work. It adds an extra button I've never used that is redundant functionality.
How about another interface? We recently got a new turkey baster, made by Good Grips. It has a built-in rest. Turkey basters get greasy-dirty, and you keep using them off and on for hours. The rest keeps it from getting grease all over your counter. That's a great user interface!
The problem isn't "no interface". The problem is "there's an app for that". Not everything falls under smartphone convenience. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a UI.
Also, this "no interface" way of thinking often leads to poor discoverability. If users struggle to find the features they expect, the interface is not "getting out of the way". It can get pretty frustrating.
Depends how long term we're talking here. If we're talking in a 100 years then yeah 'no interface' is king because ideally we would have microchip implants that allows us to intuitively gather knowledge and do whatever computing we do today simply in our heads.
But today? I have a feeling what they REALLY mean is seamless integration is king over just another app to limit the amount of time used navigating user interfaces (and if we can get that to zero such as opening a door even better).
Actually all terminal, vin, emacs, got, etc users here probably agree: best interface for advanced interaction with complex system is still the console. I would configure and program and repair my futuristic car from a remote keyboard and black screen. Then it will open the doors by nfc when my phone is close enough. And if on the move, I'll reprogram it from a term app in my phone.
1. touch-handle to unlock is awesome and useful 2. touch-handle to lock is worse than useless. keep this on the fob and on the interior. nobody reaches for the exterior handle when they're walking away from the car. 3. the touch shouldn't be too sensitive, and should only be on the inside of the door handle (or under the door handle, whatever the layout is) - my 4. there should be a delay of about 500ms i.e. touch it for half a second before it unlocks. 5. no button, like you mentioned
It wouldn't be rocket science to add a layer that worked out whether you were walking towards or away from some specific hardware reference transceiver, checked some credentials, and responded with some action.
So - car "keys", hotel room "keys", house "keys", house lights, virtual boarding passes and other travel tickets, etc.
Watch is supposed to do some of this but the UIKit in iOS wasn't really designed for this kind of interaction. So the 'wave your watch around to unlock your room' idea still isn't as streamlined as it could be. NFC/RFID may not be the right technology for this.
It's a good bet that Apple and Google have either worked this out already or will work it out very soon. Disney already have.
It's true that current app UIs are non-ideal. But apps are a transitional solution, and I don't expect them to be around in their current form for more than another few years at most.
"Ideally, we’d like users to go to a site and find the answer they’re looking for right there, in front of their eyes. That would mean zero interaction cost and is the holy grail of usability as a field.
Unfortunately, zero interaction cost is rarely attainable, since most sites and apps offer many things that users may want to do."
[0] - http://www.nngroup.com/articles/interaction-cost-definition/
Yes, the name of the manifesto is very click-baity and in my opinion presents a naive view on interaction design. But to play the devil's advocate: I've attended a workshop by Golden Krishna, and I think he purposely oversimplifies his point to get it across to people who are not professional interaction designers.
For a good rant on the many issues with touch screen-centred interface design, I suggest this essay by Bret Victor:
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
Note that at no point he suggests abolishing having an interface altogether.
Putting in a motion sensor and removing the light switch forces the user of the room to meet the conditions the engineers of the room designed it for.
Providing a motion sensing light switch that has a manual toggle on it allows the user to correct for potential use cases that the automated sensor is not programmed to meet.
The best interface is the intuitive one, not a lack of one for the sake of saying it does not need to exist.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
.... 5 hours later
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Walk around with a key in my pocket.
Pull out key.
Open car door.
---
Yeah, give me the app that opens up my car door any day of the week, or a retina scanner on my car's lock.
Recursively search through jailer style fractal key ring for car key
Find key and hold it between thumb and forefinger
Manoeuvre hand so as to separate car key from others
Insert into hole
Rotate
...etc.
There's probably some Maslow's hierarchy for design that looks like (designer friends - please let me what wheel I'm reinventing please):
1. The system has to be told exactly how to perform a task. 2. The system has reasonable defaults on how to do it. You push execute. 3. The system knows what you want and just does it.
The car key app requiring 13 steps means we're still in phase 1. The fact that it works at all is forward progress because before you couldn't do it at all! (One might argue that it's right now not useful and I would probably agree with that.[0][1])
The next step forward is probably to geofence your car and when you're near, a push notification asks you if you'd like to open your car door.
Finally, we get to the two step walk to door, open door.
We've got a long way to go and I applaud Mr. Krishna for pushing us further along. It does seem therefore that we should encourage app designers to continue to make apps with clunky interfaces so that we can begin the journey towards the goal - no interface at all.
I'd actually love to hear examples of systems that leapfrog from nonexistence to it's final evolution without intermediate steps. That would be really fascinating.
[0] Unrelated - rented a car once with remote keyless entry and keyless start - it is indeed a magical experience when the key never has to leave your pocket.
[1] Having gone through winter on the East Coast recently, I do think phone remote start might singlehandedly make the app worth it.
This. Interface is by the very definition a barrier between your brain and the system you want to change (by "system" I mean a system in general sense, a hammer, nail and a piece of wood also form a system). What matters is your goal and the change of system's state - everything else is cruft and we should aim to remove it.
Your brain actually tries to do that by its own. You can see it when e.g. driving a car. At first you're aware of everything - the steering wheel, the pedals, the gear shift knob, etc. You consciously manipulate them to move the car around. But at some point, with enough accumulated experience, you don't really think about the interface anymore. You just think "I want to be there" and do all the required movements to steer the car to the right place.
What is important for your brain to learn to ignore the interface is the interface being predictable and consistent. This is where, I think, smartphones are a step backwards compared to old featured phones. As we moved from firmware to full OSes, you can't rely anymore on timing. For example, on my old SE K800i I could do most frequent actions without even taking my phone from my pocket, because my brain learned the position and timing of various options. "Press Right Function, move down twice, press Right Function, wait 0.7 seconds, press Right Function...", etc. It's something that you can't do on a smartphone, because the new tech is laggy and full of unpredictable interface delays.
> The next step forward is probably to geofence your car and when you're near, a push notification asks you if you'd like to open your car door.
Or we could, you know, use NFC for opening and/or BLE for determining if the phone is near/inside the car.
Geofencing is totally a wrong tool for the job (and so far every time I heard it being suggested for something, ot was wrong for that as well).
> Finally, we get to the two step walk to door, open door.
We could do that decades ago. The way smartphones are getting introduced into the equation seems to be a huge leap backwards.
1 and 2 remind me of imperative and declarative programming languages (respectively) - telling your program how to do something versus merely telling it what to do. It's the difference between saying "x = 1" and telling your computer how to allocate sufficient memory for an integer, store that integer in said chunk of memory, and access it later.
This is basically an example of eliminating an interface. You rarely think about these interfaces because they just do the right thing. Many very simple operations have interfaces, and you can sometimes streamline or remove those interfaces using simple mechanisms.
1. The computer offers no assistance. 2. ... offers a complete set of actions. 3. ... narrows the selection down to a few. 4. ... suggests one alternative. 5. ... executes the suggestion if the human approves. 6. ... allows the human a restricted time to veto the execution. 7. ... executes, then informs the human. 8. ... executes, informs the human when asked. 9. ... executes, informs the human when the computer decides to. 10. ... acts automatically.
This is a framework for more than user interfaces, but it comes close.
Look at Fig. 1 in the paper.
[0] https://hci.cs.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/elaw/cs889/reading/autom...
* Be obvious
* Avoid extraneous "ornaments" in the interaction
* Understand what your user needs
Of course those three bullet points do not make the book (either of them, I assume) justice, but you might want to read Donald A. Norman's book first. Another book you might be interested in is Don't Make me Think[2], which is specifically related to software UI design.
I agree with the point that using smartphones for everything is a step back. Having touchscreens in cars is also a step back. We went from having controls that could manipulated without taking the eyes on the road to fancy futuristic UIs that require either for you to be parked, to have a companion or do something potentially dangerous.</rant>
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...
[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134...
Sliding pictures under glass is not the future of interfaces.
Likewise, as I've gotten into the habit of giving the handle a strong pull after locking to make sure it's locked, I don't think a proximity system would work so well for me.
80% of the author's frustration could be resolved with a lockscreen widget that launches the app into the appropriate action, preferably authenticated with fingerprint/TouchID/passcode.
Then it becomes a) pull out phone, b) unsleep display c) use lock screen widget d) authenticate using passcode/TouchID.
What if I want another widget on my screen ? Do I put it there too ? Where do I stop ?
And in any case, it is still longer than just a) pulling a handle.
The whole point of the rant is that interfaces shouldn't be something we have to go through: they should be transparent. In the case he presented (Siemens'), there is no interface.
We have built a culture of "there's an app for that" where 99% of these apps are absolute, total crap. You don't need Tapatalk's app to browse forums, you don't need an app to turn on your lights, etc. An unbelievable amount of apps are actually slower at doing something than they were supposed to solve.
Disney's Magicband (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9177105)
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3212949)
It does not even scroll smoothly on any version of Android - an unbelievable acheivement.
There's also an advantage to not having to carry around a key, replacing it with a digital trigger that lives on your smartphone. One less thing to carry around, and that goes even for the app.
As for the UI, Apple Pay does this right.
The author mentions a weather app and an app that shows basic stock market data as examples, but it's unclear to me how those problems could be solved with "No interface".
Sorry too if that's too pedantic.
With Android 5 this useful functionality just disappeared.
I want to walk up to the car. The car recognizes me because I'm carrying my phone (or watch) When I pull on the door handle it unlocks because of the proximity of the phone.
This is similar to how my car and keyfob work now but I want to carry one less item.
I ask because this is more or less an advert for his book. The introduction is presented in the third person to introduce the excerpt, and the closing is a pitch on why you should buy the book.
Also, the author addresses his readers as if we're some kind of touch-screen natives who uses our phones and other touch-screen devices to accomplish everything in our lives, and we could never conceive of anything else[2]. Am I the only one who was never enamoured with actually using smart phones? They are a pain to write messages on, they are a slightly less of a pain to browse with, and they are passable to good for everything else.
And the fact that it takes many steps to do something with your phone is supposed to be surprising? It's practically inevitable: one entry point (swipe to unlock etc.) to do all your tasks, equipped with a 5" screen. Good luck.
Thankfully, it turns out that the author's point was more novel than something silly like "What if we didn't use smart phone interfaces, but some other interface instead? WOW...". I hadn't considered a solution like Siemens'. I don't know if it is preferable to my key that already has a remote attached, but it's very interesting.
[1] Yes, I know it's a chapter from his book. But it's published as an article so I will judge it as such.
[2] "Don’t let your emotions blind you" - How about "don't talk down to me"?
★★★
Side note: He has a point about 'everything has to be an app', though. I'm supposed to be using some form of identification, and they used to send out a piece of paper and a little "this is valid for this time period" thing to attach to your card. Now, they have phased that out for an app. An app. To replace a piece of paper and a card. No, I don't think it even replaces the card since you use it to access certain places.
You're not the only one, in fact I don't even think they any good at browsing. The whole touch screen interface is pretty much flawed for anything where you not limited to a few large button. It simply doesn't make sense that you covering information with our fingers. Discoverability is often pretty bad, mostly I suspect it's because of limited screen space, there simply isn't room for information, navigation and my fingers.