The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
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Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#2At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction.
During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they are absolutely right. We are on an interface craze. Everything has a twitter panel, which isn't a bad idea, but most designs nowadays obstruct regular interaction to ease a few corner use cases.
Blogs and newspapers hide their content beneath social buttons. Current "Smart TVs" are bad as TVs though they have great facebook support.
But, 99% of the time you want to watch the TV, and if you need to press some buttons for that, you're actually delaying and difficulting the main use case.
Can I mention Apple at this point? Apple is both hated and loved because of its interface design, but I think they're spot on. If they can define the best interaction patterns with a TV and program then on their future iTV, they might eat the market.
What do you think?
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#3At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction. During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they a…
First off, I liked the article. He's right in that visual UI should only be looked at after everything possible has been gleaned from process.
As for TVs, I think most who are designing the interfaces are still stuck "inside the box". They need to take a couple steps back and learn how modern people use the interfaces. This is one of the main reasons I dropped cable and now feed my TV from a web-connected PC. The cable box interface was a thick jungle of rectangular boxes when searching or filtering should be forefront. We have the technology!
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#4One reason retailers are chomping at the bits over near field payment is that it will eliminate all the unproductive conversation between employees One and customers. Distracted by their phone, there will be less likelihood of personal interaction. This will leave the employee free to pimp magazine subscriptions and extended warranties in strict accordance with the scripts retailers are forcing upon checkout line staff.
There's already a great interface for taking people's money which doesn't require a location aware electronic device. It has a face and a uses natural language.
(Now, get off my lawn).
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#5I thought this was great. Learning from the users as much as possible in order for the interface to get out of the users way is a solid idea that can be incorporated into nearly everything... you just have to not implement it in a Clippy "Did you mean..." kind of way.
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#6One reason retailers are chomping at the bits over near field payment is that it will eliminate all the unproductive conversation between employees One and customers. Distracted by their phone, there will be less likelihood of personal interaction. This will leave the employee free to pimp magazine subscriptions and extended warranties in strict accordance with the scripts retailers are forcing upon checkout line sta…
Retailer's will surely recognize that their value add is in the personal, friendly, and helpful atmosphere they can create with their staff. Square seems to have pretty much hit the nail on the head with 'Auto Tab' - eliminating the awkward, unglamorous part of the process (the obvious exchange of money) means that the coffee shop barista can instead focus on greeting the customer by name, offering the usual or taking a different order without reminding them of the money their spending or directly fiddling aroudn with cash or phones.
Sounds like a pretty ideal shopping experience to me. The only real benefit I see NFC having is that it can eliminate the wallet from my pocket.
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#7At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction. During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they a…
First off, I liked the article. He's right in that visual UI should only be looked at after everything possible has been gleaned from process. As for TVs, I think most who are designing the interfaces are still stuck "inside the box". They need to take a couple steps back and learn how modern people use the interfaces. This is one of the main reasons I dropped cable and now feed my TV from a web-connected PC. The cab…
My grandfather, a regular country man, is horrorized by the amount of choices he has.
Nowadays there is a remote for the TV with a lot of buttons, another for the video decoder, with more buttons, and another for the radio, with yes, more buttons.
He was used to have a machine which worked upon being switched on. The TV had buttons labeled 1-10 for the ten channels. The radio only needed a dial and a volume slider.
He can't use the radio anymore and, with his age, he's starting to get stuck when he presses the wrong TV button (teletext, menus, etc). We taught him to turn the TV off and on again.
More choices is not always better. Interfaces need to be simple or nonexistant. And, by the way, TV manufacturers should ship TVs with two remotes. The regular one, and another for seniors, containing only buttons 1-10 and the volume control.
Seniors, for some reason, think they'll blow the machine up if they press the wrong button. And seniority is where we're all heading...
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#8At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction. During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they a…
First off, I liked the article. He's right in that visual UI should only be looked at after everything possible has been gleaned from process. As for TVs, I think most who are designing the interfaces are still stuck "inside the box". They need to take a couple steps back and learn how modern people use the interfaces. This is one of the main reasons I dropped cable and now feed my TV from a web-connected PC. The cab…
The PS3 XMB interface is still one of my favorite simple interfaces to use on a TV screen, especially since it works with only a directional gamepad and a few buttons.
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#9I'm curious just how far down the rabiit hole you can take this philosiphy.
Just how many APIs and programming interfaces and other interaction points of a computer can be eliminated or automated away or even made to adapt to user preferences?
What would this mean for the divide between the Operating System and its Applications?
Re: The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
First off, I liked the article. He's right in that visual UI should only be looked at after everything possible has been gleaned from process. As for TVs, I think most who are designing the interfaces are still stuck "inside the box". They need to take a couple steps back and learn how modern people use the interfaces. This is one of the main reasons I dropped cable and now feed my TV from a web-connected PC. The cab…
My grandfather, a regular country man, is horrorized by the amount of choices he has. Nowadays there is a remote for the TV with a lot of buttons, another for the video decoder, with more buttons, and another for the radio, with yes, more buttons. He was used to have a machine which worked upon being switched on. The TV had buttons labeled 1-10 for the ten channels. The radio only needed a dial and a volume slider. H…
I'm not affiliated with this product but it looks like the remote you're talking about: https://www.flipperremote.com/
We need more of this kind of conversation at HN - identify a problem or pain point and talk about how to meet that need.