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Fantasy UI

pushing-pixels.org

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Re: Fantasy UI

#41

Post by _trampeltier »

weego wrote: post #34
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.

No, most todays UI is not really great. On websites you often can't navigate just with the keyboard and shortcuts does not work at all. An a really terrible new UI thing are these on / off sliders. So often is not clear where the slider is, because it's not clear if the slider or the background is colored. Also a lot of new software comes with shortcuts, but you would need 3 hands to push all buttons for it. Also for me, all the Google style, round, flat, to much color, I just can't see it anymore. I hate the look so much.

Re: Fantasy UI

#42

Post by partyboat1586 »

mym1990 wrote: post #12
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 also remember the times you are reminiscing about. I would go look up lists of top innovative websites in a given month and just be blown away with the moving pieces and interaction. But...from a consulting and a developer perspective, the marginal utility for increasingly artistic and engaging UI seems to be fairly low from a cost/ROI perspective. If you could figure out a truly compelling reason to spend 100 more…

>marginal utility for increasingly artistic and engaging UI seems to be fairly low from a cost/ROI perspective.

This is exactly the problem. The artistic part of design is gone and turned into another utilitarian measurable. The same thing has been happening in architecture, designs getting simpler and more usability focused but they held on to some kind of artistry better than web designers. When we design a building people are happy to spend a little extra to make it beautiful but not so with websites.

Re: Fantasy UI

#43

Post by the_other »

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)…

Another part of this equation is that fantasy interfaces control fantasy devices: robots, star cruisers, semi-AI nanobots.

Most SaaS problems are boring as all hell. Move some files around, ensure legal compliance, leave an audit trail. Good luck making that shit epic.

Re: Fantasy UI

#44

Post by depressedpanda »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #38

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…

Yes, very much this.

I don't have much to add except that I wonder why something similar hasn't been done already? I mean, it's an UI that works fine in RTS games, so why wouldn't it work for application windows?

Re: Fantasy UI

#45

Post by mahesh_rm »

the_other wrote: post #43
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)…

Another part of this equation is that fantasy interfaces control fantasy devices: robots, star cruisers, semi-AI nanobots. Most SaaS problems are boring as all hell. Move some files around, ensure legal compliance, leave an audit trail. Good luck making that shit epic.

This. 99% of B2B Dashboards solve trivial problems. If I need to filter by a boolean, the cleanest possible solution is something like an input field. If you need to create a "Clean" modern interface of the Shuttle Control Cockpit, it's likely that your dashboard will need to morph into something that resembles more a Fantasy UI.

Re: Fantasy UI

#46

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

The single biggest common denominator between so many fantasy UIs, is transparent (HUD-style) interfaces. I was just watching the latest episode of The Expanse, last night, and saw them all using these transparent PDA/phones.

Ever try using a transparent UI? It's absolutely maddening.

Looks cool on the screen, but is pretty much unusable IRL.

Re: Fantasy UI

#47

Post by Fnoord »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #46

The single biggest common denominator between so many fantasy UIs, is transparent (HUD-style) interfaces. I was just watching the latest episode of The Expanse , last night, and saw them all using these transparent PDA/phones. Ever try using a transparent UI? It's absolutely maddening. Looks cool on the screen, but is pretty much unusable IRL.

Because the transparency has no function in these cases.

Functional transparency example would be AR. For example navigation or car HUD on computer aided glasses.

Re: Fantasy UI

#48

Post by dfox »

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 :)

For a long time that was my approach to LoB backoffice applications: make the backend clever enough that there is no need for non-trivial user interfaces (in the sense of being non-trivial to implement). That in part works well but on the other hand there are situations when the user knows more, uses the thing every day and thus making something something that looks like sci-fi UI (or like something straight out of mid-90's OS HIG, with the difference being mostly about color choice) makes sense.

Re: Fantasy UI

#49

Post by pc86 »

_trampeltier wrote: post #41
weego wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, most todays UI is not really great. On websites you often can't navigate just with the keyboard and shortcuts does not work at all. An a really terrible new UI thing are these on / off sliders. So often is not clear where the slider is, because it's not clear if the slider or the background is colored. Also a lot of new software comes with shortcuts, but you would need 3 hands to push all buttons for it. Also for…

Saying "I can't navigate a website just using my keyboard" is sort of like saying "I can't drive my car just using the steering." Well, of course you can't. You're not supposed to be able to, unless you have some sort of assistance hardware/software loaded that articulates/emulates the missing control(s).

Re: Fantasy UI

#50

Post by nlitened »

mahesh_rm wrote: post #45
the_other wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another part of this equation is that fantasy interfaces control fantasy devices: robots, star cruisers, semi-AI nanobots. Most SaaS problems are boring as all hell. Move some files around, ensure legal compliance, leave an audit trail. Good luck making that shit epic.

This. 99% of B2B Dashboards solve trivial problems. If I need to filter by a boolean, the cleanest possible solution is something like an input field. If you need to create a "Clean" modern interface of the Shuttle Control Cockpit, it's likely that your dashboard will need to morph into something that resembles more a Fantasy UI.

> If I need to filter by a boolean, the cleanest possible solution is something like an input field.

I think here by "the cleanest possible solution" you mean "the simplest to make without any need to understand the actual underlying business". With that approach, 99% of B2B dashboards will be boring, trivial problems re-done again and again, but also crappy UIs with which actual users struggle.

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