The Desktop is Dead.
Deal with it...
January 1, 2000
- from Futuristic Design's Straight Face column at:
-
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 21st 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
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