marc (marcn) wrote, @ 2006-01-09 01:26:00

Ignorant interfaces
Rich Ziade has a good post over at BASEMENT.ORG on just how little our software really does for us, something I constantly rant about, as my most patient cublicle-mate could attest.  : )


When we use a piece of technology - whether a web browser, a portable music player, or a cable box - really anything that deals with content delivery and manipulation - we provide an invaluable amount of raw data about our behaviours, interests and habits. Almost all these devices today simply operate as workers - never doing more than what’s asked of them: play that song, display that article, record that movie. Once the task is completed, these devices (for the most part) completely forget what was asked of them and simply wait for the next task request.

Rich, I couldn’t agree with you more. Rich goes on to although as you note with MS Office, it’s vital that this interaction morphing be careful not to undermine other important aspects of the UI, and it’s conventions -- for me, chasing Office menus was always a constant annoyance, and undermined the experience.

Of course there have been basic examples of this sort of ‘software memory’ for a long time, e.g. graphics tools that remember recent object styles, but for a more user evident expression of ‘interaction morphing’, email and web browsers, and news readers in particular, are well positioned to benefit handsomely.

Both the OmniWeb and Camino browsers on Mac OS X track your most visited sites, in addition to your conventional history, and of course email apps generally track previous recipients for address completion (at least Apple Mail.)

A good news reader should be able to actively help me manage not only the mountain of articles, but based on user observation it should be able to help me manage the incoming feed subscriptions, as I discover new people or projects to track, and help me cull out the ones that I’ve stopped actively following.

Daniel Wilson over at Membranophonist’s Ramblings also blogs on these sorts of intelligent interface design enhancements, and is well worth a look, and he’s much more prolific than I!

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