Madison Rails
death of desktop
Notes form Aza Raskin’s presentation on Death of the Desktop.
Interface Concepts
- cognetics = ergonomics of the brain
- 7 +- 2 = amount of things we can keep in our brains
- habituation – never use a warning when you mean undo
- people will make mistakes despite any warnings, due to habit
- hick’s and fitt’s law
- hierarchical menus are evil
- information efficency
- there are quantitative measures of how good an interface is
Interface
- interface – what you do with a thing and how it responds
- to a user, the interface is the product
- keep simple things simple
- if you have trouble explaining your interface, your users will have trouble using it!
- compare: setting a digital watch (hellish) versus setting an analog watch (simple)
Other Simple Things That Aren’t
- cell phones – why can’t we take pics on a cell phone like we do with cameras
- rounded corners
- adding an entry to Google Calendar
The Problem: Applications
- applications are like isolated cities
- sepearte applications generate waste
- for example, think of how many different spell checkers your typical win xp pc has
- OLE and OpenDoc was an attempt at this problem, but don’t really work
Solution?
- start at the beginning
- what does an interface do?
- four things: create content, navigate content, select content, transform content
- when designing an interface, return to the building blocks
- example: why don’t all applications auto save?
Content is Everything
- think of content and user first, and let the interface follow from that
- this is why the desktop is doomed – no work gets down in the desktop
What Does the Desktop Do?
- lets you get into a state where you can enter content
- lets you categorize content
- lets you navigate content
Language has untapped power
- Aza did his entire presentation with Explorer closed by using Enso, the product his company is working on
- looks similiar to Quicksilver, only with more power to integrate with the current app
- Spotlight/Google Desktop Search
- structured natural language is one possible way
Navigation
- icons are faster then words only in very limited cases
- let search be search
- let 2d content be 2d
- why are large montiors more productive? because you can have everything open, and things don’t get hidden
- let the user’s structure be
Let the Desktop Die
- the toolkit straitjacket can hold us back
- if a toolkit is created to make it easy to recreate the desktop on the web, thats what you’ll end up doing
- why would you want to try and emulate the desktop on the web?
- we have a unique opportunity at this point on the web – we must not return to the desktop
- Alex (from Dojo) admits toolkit designers have a difficult time bridging the gap to interaction design – he wants to work with experts in the field – where are they?
Solutions – Services
- mashups
- let you stand on shoulders of giants
- seperation of UI from backend
- services are for end users and developers
Solutions – Universal Access Interface
- bookmarks are not scalable
- url bar doesn’t scale
- need a fast, semantic method
- example: ENSO
- design for the Big Picture
Take Home
- content is everything, given a good interface
- language is power
- services are good
- unifcation
Further Reading
