Comments on: Describe Your UI in One Sentence

By: brian_hart1973

brian_hart1973 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

You're not saying the command line is dead with your DOS/3270 comment, are you? Terminal windows are still a core way I interact with remote machines, and there are some actions where a DOS window is still the ideal interface.

The training hurdle with DOS or terminal windows is higher, but it's often a much more direct way to tell the computer what I want than a web interface…

By: brian_hart1973

brian_hart1973 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

BTW what interfaces have you come across that really "wowed" you? Flickr is amazing, and bugtracking tool JIRA is really nice, too. Most Google sites, too, for their simplicity.

By: graeme_thic3654

graeme_thic3654 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

this is a great thread you got goin' here, Brad! I particularly find interesting the comment about "making it intuitive"....

this becomes a big issue with all the talk about the future being hybrid apps

By: matt lambert

matt lambert — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

Everyone says "please make it intuitive" when talking about the UI – and they really mean is "can you make your new software look like the old stuff".

http://www.conversationware.co.uk/tag/gui the third post in this list is most relevant.

By: dave3657

dave3657 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

The map from the UI to linguistics is most important when you first learn it. After you have learned it, what is most important is its mapping to, and its facility in perceptual-motor function, and that usually cannot be expressed very well in language.

By: bfeld

bfeld — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

Lots of different things. More in the new year as I get detailed about it. There is a lot of HCI stuff going on in academia that is starting to finally spill out (e.g. MIT, CMU).

By: Nari Kannan

Nari Kannan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

"A User Interface should be the simplest way to accomplish something with a system, most natural to the user and the actions"

It;s interesting how some good interfaces have accomplished the simplest part first and the most natural way is now evolving as technology and speed of computing improves. DOS Interfaces were the first to so the simple part, then the mouse interface improved on it and now something like thw Wii extends it in three dimensions.

Museum interactions can make more progress on the Natural part since the range of interactions are more limited than say, a Database Management software. Google achieved this very simply by limiting the default interaction to just one, a single box into which you type in things and click search.

By: bfeld

bfeld — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

Oh – well have a CLI forever. That's not what I'm talking about. Think of a completely different way of interacting with the computer (e.g. no keyboard, no mouse, no windows.

By: leeander3673

leeander3673 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

UI: the way used by a specific product to communicate with humans

By: peter_crans3620

peter_crans3620 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:49 +0000

We came up with a new twist for the UI. We integrated contextual menus into the browser in real time. As the web service recognizes who, what and where you are, the service sends out personalized contextual menus that show up in the browser. The upshot is that the consumer doesn’t have to learn a new interface – it’s the same familiar one, except this time it’s far more relevant to “me”.