No Interface

Today the market offers SmartTV, SmartFridge, SmartCars, SmartPhones...and a host of devices with complicated and sometimes unnecessary user interface to make you look stupid. Agree?

I came across this wonderful post on UI, The best interface is no interface. The title says it all. It is almost as if the author knew how we feel about (over-designed) interfaces. More importantly, the author advocates 3 principles for the 'no interface approach' with interesting examples to prove his point. Here are some nuggets:

"Creative minds in technology should focus on solving problems. Not just make interfaces. 

As Donald Norman said in 1990 - 'The real problem with the interface is that it is an interface. Interfaces get in the way. I don’t want to focus my energies on an interface. I want to focus on the job…I don’t want to think of myself as using a computer, I want to think of myself as doing my job.'

It’s time for us to move beyond screen-based thinking. Because when we think in screens, we design based upon a model that is inherently unnatural, inhumane, and has diminishing returns. It requires a great deal of talent, money and time to make these systems somewhat usable, and after all that effort, the software can sadly, only truly improve with a major overhaul.

There is a better path: No UI. A design methodology that aims to produce a radically simple technological future without digital interfaces......

......Several car companies have recently created smartphone apps that allow drivers to unlock their car doors. Generally, the unlocking feature plays out like this:

1. A driver approaches her car.
2. Takes her smartphone out of her purse.
3. Turns her phone on.
4. Slides to unlock her phone.
5. Enters her passcode into her phone.
6. Swipes through a sea of icons, trying to find the app.
7. Taps the desired app icon.
8. Waits for the app to load.
9. Looks at the app, and tries figure out (or remember) how it works.
10. Makes a best guess about which menu item to hit to unlock doors and taps that item.
11. Taps a button to unlock the doors.
12. The car doors unlock.
13. She opens her car door.

Thirteen steps later, she can enter her car.

The app forces the driver to use her phone. She has to learn a new interface. And the experience is designed around the flow of the computer, not the flow of a person.

If we eliminate the UI, we’re left with only three, natural steps:

1. A driver approaches her car.
2. The car doors unlock.
3. She opens her car door.

Anything beyond these three steps should be frowned upon. Seem crazy?" 

 

 

Are you uncomfortable enough?

I read this wonderful article yesterday on the idea behind the designs of India’s iconic monuments. The article starts off with Chandigarh, a beautiful city designed by Le Corbusier.

When the city of Chandigarh and its legislative assembly buildings were built, the architecture cast in concrete was very different from the Parliament and other legislative houses built before in India. It looked neither like a palace nor a temple, the two traditional archetypes that served as a model to represent power or ‘culture'. Chandigarh's lexicon of forms was new. Not everyone liked it.

Dismissing the scepticism, Nehru, who ardently supported it, said, “Some like it, and some dislike it… You may squirm at the impact, but it has made you think.”

Nehru, being the Prime Minister, fortunately had the final say and it resulted in one of the finest cities of the world being created. It is another thing that in the ensuing decades we have done our damndest best to reduce it to the chaotic depths of other Indian cities.

More importantly, great ideas will always generate extreme views (and buzz). It will make a lot of people uncomfortable.  Therefore, one’s got to be ballsy enough to take a decision in its favor.

(Image courtesy:Ben+_+)