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> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Ooof, and here we are, 25 years later, with an intervening opportunity to completely redefine HCI (smartphones), and it's still basically all WIMP.
Weird, my hand computer only has icons out of those 4.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven’t read your piece yet, but I searched the page and didn’t find any mention of DEC VMS’s DCL, or Symbolics Genera’s Dynamic Listener. If you’re talking about how to design a command line for usability, you really need to become familiar with them, as usability and extensibility were explicit design points and they both work very differently than (and much better than) even modern UNIX. They should have come up…
I haven't read the piece either and I also don't know what any of those acronyms are all about but how is "I didn't read this but I CTRL+F'd for terms I believe to be important and they weren't there so what are you even doing" a useful comment to make?
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive…
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive…
I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."
> The see-and-point principle states that users interact with the computer by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with expressive language, and been reduced to pointing at objects in the immediate environment. Mouse buttons and modifier keys give us a vocabulary equivalent to a few different grunts. We have lost all the power of language, and can no longer talk about objects that are not immediately visible (all files more than one week old), objects that don't exist yet (future messages from my boss), or unknown objects (any guides to restaurants in Boston).
Does this mean a commandline is always better, because it's more expressive? No, it's a trade-off between this and ease of learning:
> The GUIs of contemporary applications are generally well designed for ease of learning, but there often is a trade-off between ease of learning on one hand, and ease of use, power, and flexibility on the other hand. Although you could imagine a society where language was easy to learn because people communicated by pointing to words and icons on large menus they carried about, humans have instead chosen to invest many years in mastering a rich and complex language.
There's a neat coincidence that illustrates this tradeoff. While this article says:
> If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef.
Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers (an excellent book, looks like it's available online in full on his blog: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-des...) says:
> Using a command-line interface is like having to learn the complete Korean language just to order food in the Seoul branch of McDonalds. Using a menu-based interface is like being able to point to the food you want and grunt and nod your head: it conveys the same information with no learning curve.
I'm pretty sure it's a coincidence that the same example of a restaurant in a foreign country is used, but despite apparent contradiction, they make the same point: The text interface requires more time to learn, in return for being more expressive and powerful. Whether that's worth it to you depends on how long you intend to live in that environment, and how rich an experience you'd like to have.
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive…
I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."
The framing hammer got heavier with a longer handle, broader face, straighter claw, and waffled face better for gripping nails (also why most loose framing nails have a cross-hatched pattern: so they can mate with the hammer face). From there, materials science really kicked in, and we saw steel-handled models, followed by fiberglass and other composite handles.
The latest developments (that I'm aware of) are products like the Stiletto (http://www.stiletto.com/p-80-ti-bone-iii-hammer-with-milled-...), which leverage materials like titanium to reduce weight while maintaining driving power, and include a replaceable steel face to prolong hammer life and allow using different faces for different applications.
Modern hammers with advanced material properties and functions can cost hundreds of dollars, but deliver much higher efficiency with less fatigue and a longer life. I compare that with the Sears hammer in my grandfather's garage and see a whole new generation of evolution.
There's a great article about hammer history at Fine Homebuilding: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/hamm...
edited: Fix link formatting.
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive…
Or maybe known-good-enough: We evolved this specific design through a path-dependent fashion, so it could have been different had other designs survived, but nobody else has come up with a new UX paradigm which is sufficiently better to displace it yet.
Various kinds of large dinosaurs were dominant for millions of years, and birds still exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I consider myself one of those people who would comment about the design of hammer being stuck and more people should, that is how we innovate. The real world is always changing and evolving with time, so are technologies be it for computers - UI that allowed for the desktop GUI paradigm in the 90's to today where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice. We need to certainly move o…
What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?
I was always intrigued by the Starfire project mentioned here. The concept video from Sun is definitely peak 90s, but some of the things inside have finally come true 20 years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY