The Desktop is Dead.
Deal with it...

January 1, 2000

Am I the only person who cringes every time I turn on a desktop computer? 

Listen up all you interface designers, interaction experts, user experience engineers, web graphic artistes and web usability specialists – it’s time to start over. Period. It all goes. I mean all of it. I’m not kidding here, either. We can’t blame those  hyper-aggressive marketing types or over-caffeinated engineers for our problems any longer. It’s our turn to take the lead in software design. And it’s our job to keep it.

The result of moving so many businesses onto the Web in the last two years is that we’ve created interface anarchy. Even though most websites look pretty much the same these days, Human Interface professionals will know what I mean. The taboo of not drawing outside the lines of published GUI standards was shattered by the rise of the web hack (the person who designs websites with no real interface or interaction design experience or fundamentals). And because only de facto interface guidelines exist for the Web, some people take their newfound freedom in all sorts of interesting directions.

I’m not complaining about that problem though, because the web hack movement has created a great opportunity for us to finally get rid of our old baggage and think new ideas. But what does upset me is that so many talented people, who should know better, are re-inventing the desktop GUI on the Web. That paradigm has served us well since the 1980’s, but let’s move on here. It just doesn’t make sense anymore given the strides we’ve made since then in interaction design and interface technologies.

So why are we repeating our mistakes by re-incarnating the desktop GUI on the Web?

Oh yeah. Now I remember. That sacred word…consistency. Well, guess what. All bets are off. Your job from now on is giving people exactly what they want and need at any particular time, not making them conform to a de facto interface standard. So step back from the problem you're working on. Use your head. Innovate.

We’re at the flashpoint for a new kind of interface design -- adaptive. All signs point toward radical shifts in how we interact with each other. Communications technologies are moving at lightspeed. The fact is the systems you design going forward will be used from all manor of device, on who knows what kind of connections. They need to be smarter than smart. Look around you. We’re not going back to the old ways of doing things. No way. Now that we’ve given people a taste of personalization, they want more. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

I’m sure you’ve thought about this recently: it’s already the 21^st century – the future promised to us in our childhoods. And guess what, I don't see any flying cars yet. But what we do have as the community of people who design software is the opportunity to set the future direction of how it looks and acts.

Let’s not blow it by clinging to the past.

M. Pell