Thu, Jun 16, 2005
Two strategies for rich interface design
Much of the excitement surrounding the recent push towards richer interfaces revolves around two new possibilities:
1.
Much of the excitement surrounding the recent push towards richer interfaces revolves around two new possibilities:
1. We now have more control over the experiential flow
Previously, interactive conversations required the steady post-response-post-response of a well structured conversation, like stilted dialog performed by wooden actors.
Richer interfaces let us remove the pregnant pause between each line, make the conversation more lively. It allows either party interject and interrupt the way we?��Ǩ�Ѣve been talking for thousands of years. Richer interfaces allow us to create more natural conversations; they allow for better story-telling, however…
Sometimes you still want a good pause.
2. We now have the ability to design any interface
Just as post-response imprisoned conversations, it imprisoned data manipulation and communication in turn-based, time-lapsed photography, requiring users to manually advance the roll after each photo was taken. Free from post-response, the camera is on and we?��Ǩ�Ѣre free to just move, knowing the camera is recording everything.
Similarly, the explosion in DOM scripting (DHTML) lets us directly manipulate the interface in more natural ways. It?��Ǩ�Ѣs like moving from the army men you had as a child to the army men in Toy Story. And the camera?��Ǩ�Ѣs rolling, catching everything.
The differences in possibility
In the first case, we?��Ǩ�Ѣre modifying, improving, cybernetically altering our flesh, converting our old heroes into million dollar men. In the second case, we?��Ǩ�Ѣve flung open the door on a metaphorical cyberspace where the new interfaces will be so different and yet so natural that we can barely envision what their earliest, ugliest version will look like.
The first enhances spoken language, the chief interface we?��Ǩ�Ѣve used for 1000s of years to communicate. The second begins to merge spoken language with our internal dialogs.
Following this shift, there are two emerging strategies for design, different approaches for different types of interfaces. Remembering we have two emerging, conflicting design strategies will make it easier to navigate the conflicting reports coming out of each camp, and also help us understand when to choose one strategy over the other.
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