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Fantasy UI

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Re: Fantasy UI

#31

Post by blauditore »

underwater wrote: post #16
idiocrat wrote: post #3

Microsoft is one trillion worth, but can offer only laughable Metro UI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA

Metro is terrible as a desktop and tablet UI, but was fantastic for mobile interfaces. Microsoft's mistake was thinking UIs would converge across form factors.

I still believe the overall vision is/was good. They just would have had to make a few more compromises, like some additional optimizations for desktop where users could profit more from mouse and keybaord.

But another factor was that the change was just to deep of a cut, and the world was just not ready for it. People were overwhelmed when they were expected to suddenly use magic corners and gestures instead of clicking a button. If it would have been a slower change, it might have worked out better.

Re: Fantasy UI

#32

Post by kaba0 »

cycomanic wrote: post #19
Chris_Newton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We lost the Art of interface building and turned it into a complete science. I agree, but I think there’s a bit more to it than that. An extremely condensed history of software UI design might look something like this: Programmer UIs Designer UIs Semi-automatic, data-driven UIs At first, we didn’t have the same distinctions between roles that many places making software and UIs have today. A UI would be put together…

I don't work in UI design and really only have a layman's perspective. To add to what you and else here said, my view is that most of these fantasy interfaces are build for specialised/professional tasks. My impression of most of the user interfaces we encounter on the other hand is that they are build for the lowest common denominator and much of what the previous poster called "the science" is about how quickly the…

Completely agree. I would be interested in a modern, advanced user GUI trend - like most of the modern UIs optimize for discoverability and for a sufficiently complex use case (like photoshop, video/music editing software) where learning the UI is a must, most programs would need a feature-packed, hotkey/gesture-rich one.

Re: Fantasy UI

#33

Post by rbrambila »

unklefolk wrote: post #28

I've always wondered who does those browsers / email clients / phone UIs you see in films and on TV that are kind of familiar but also not "real" software. I'm talking about everyday films - not futuristic fantasy. Often when someone writes an email in a film the UI is some kind of Frankenstein interface that isn't recognisable as say Gmail or Outlook. Am I just imagining this? Is there a company that specializes in…

I’m currently working on an FUI for a short film with those sorts of principles in mind - a more “realistic” interpretation of what you might call “every day software” (in this case it’s for a call center of sorts).

There’s a sci-fi element but very much grounded in current day technologies so it’s the furthest thing away from the typical Marvel FUI.

One of the hardest challenges is making the UI “read” in film - that is getting the point of the action across while trying to remain truthful to some sort of sense of functionality. Oh, and also making it look interesting and/or feel original :)

Here’s an unused direction for that “call center” UI based on NeXT/Win95- I’ve actually since shifted to something quite different (more of a backend web app feel from the mid 2000s I’d say) for the final look but still thought it’d be fun to share this initial glimpse:

https://twitter.com/ftrsprvln/status/1336366361635786752?s=2...

Re: Fantasy UI

#34

Post by weego »

krm01 wrote: post #10

As a UI/UX agency that focusses on B2B SaaS, I’ve always found Fantasy UIs fascinating. It’s the complete opposite of the simple & clean interfaces clients ask us to design. I’ve spent some time thinking about why these Fantasy UIs are so fascinating despite the fact they seem not very user friendly. My conclusion was that fantasy Interfaces are very much like the early web. Lots of moving parts (dancing banana gifs)…

I'm not convinced we even turned it into science. I think we turned it into a pseudo-science of confirmation biases, poor contextual understanding and even distain for our own users while actively devaluing the role that design plays in interaction.

Re: Fantasy UI

#35

Post by qmmmur »

krm01 wrote: post #10

As a UI/UX agency that focusses on B2B SaaS, I’ve always found Fantasy UIs fascinating. It’s the complete opposite of the simple & clean interfaces clients ask us to design. I’ve spent some time thinking about why these Fantasy UIs are so fascinating despite the fact they seem not very user friendly. My conclusion was that fantasy Interfaces are very much like the early web. Lots of moving parts (dancing banana gifs)…

Did you even look at the website? It's clearly aimed at making futuristic cyber tech style interfaces. A lot of the examples are for cinema.

Re: Fantasy UI

#36

Post by tgv »

vincnetas wrote: post #24
tgv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that strikes me is that these interfaces are incredibly specialized for the task at hand, and only that. You can't build for every task, you'd need a super-intelligent system that knows how to figure out what the task is and generate the appropriate UI for it.

Yes, but if system is inteligent enough to know what is the task and why it needs to be performed, why do we even need an ui. Let the system do what is needed :)

Such systems always live in a Star Trek kind of universe, where they simply await orders from humans, yet know vastly more than them. It's probably about our sense of goal: machines help achieving a goal, but not set it. While I personally also like to have control, I'm sure there will always be a Musk or Kurzweil around to advocate machine autonomy, and they will implement it no matter what. That's why such interfaces are unrealistic.

Re: Fantasy UI

#38

Post by KozmoNau7 »

My fantasy UI would be a sort of large flat desktop plane, with ~infinite zoom. FVWM and other do have the one large desktop space that you scroll around, instead of discrete virtual desktops, but I want to see the ultimate version of that.

A vast virtual plane that you could scroll and zoom around, drag your files/content around, make groups with marked delineations like a map. Obviously there would be some kind of grouping and minimap if you zoomed out enough. Documents should be represented such that you would simply zoom into them to access their content, you wouldn't open files or start applications, everything would be represented visually and the editing tools you need would be presented as you zoom close enough. A document would be represented as pages you could flip through or spread out for a larger overview. Videos could be simply viewed or spread out into frames/segments with editing tools.

Content would not be a "text file" or an "image file", it would just be a delineated piece of content, which you could add whatever type of content to, by calling up the relevant tools.

There would be no discrete applications as such, just content and flexibility, I want it to be seamless and integrated. In some ways similar to UIs seen in Minority Report and other sci-fi movies, but without the Hollywood flash and gimmickry.

I'm aware that there are a lot of complications and practical limitations, but it's an idea I've toyed with for a while, and I'm not sure I've seen people really attempt something like it for practical use, only bits and pieces.

Re: Fantasy UI

#39

Post by andybak »

krm01 wrote: post #10

As a UI/UX agency that focusses on B2B SaaS, I’ve always found Fantasy UIs fascinating. It’s the complete opposite of the simple & clean interfaces clients ask us to design. I’ve spent some time thinking about why these Fantasy UIs are so fascinating despite the fact they seem not very user friendly. My conclusion was that fantasy Interfaces are very much like the early web. Lots of moving parts (dancing banana gifs)…

Nearest I can think of to an interface that fulfills both criteria is Kai’s Power Tools for Photoshop. They were both strange, beautiful and fairly usable.
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