Science Fiction Interfaces
May 4, 2017 1:04 PM   Subscribe

Science Fiction Interfaces -- A project by nnkd
posted by chavenet (30 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
The book Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction is a totally excellent treatment of this same topic, with lots of good analysis alongside lots of good good pictures. Highly recommended if you like this post.
posted by daniel striped tiger at 1:17 PM on May 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


Lack of Expanse UIs gives me feelings.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:50 PM on May 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


A related previously.
posted by zamboni at 2:05 PM on May 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Always so very retro.

Which I guess is something I perpetuate myself so I can't really blame anyone.
posted by Artw at 2:10 PM on May 4, 2017


No Professional White Backgrounds?
posted by Kabanos at 2:41 PM on May 4, 2017


Greenscreen looking wireframes forever.
posted by Artw at 2:46 PM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


In the future, no one has read Tufte.
posted by zompist at 2:47 PM on May 4, 2017 [13 favorites]


Hello new desktop backgrounds.
posted by signal at 3:05 PM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ahh, they're so cool. Can't wait to hear more about the Westworld UI.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:12 PM on May 4, 2017




You can tell these UIs are improbable fakes because in reality the bean counters wouldn't set aside enough people, time and money to create a cool looking GUI library from scratch, especially one that's device and species independent across entire solar systems. Like, the Galactic Empire would use the Star Wars equivalent of Bootstrap and it would require 2TB RAM just to load the css and javascript files.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:16 PM on May 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


The Deathstar is now React and we had to add sixty NPM modules just to put the planet targeting in a modal window.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on May 4, 2017 [10 favorites]


Have you tried Rust?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:20 PM on May 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


Fortunately we detonated the planet Galen Erso was on before he could sabotage us with that.
posted by Artw at 3:32 PM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I bet running CCleaner on the Death Star server would be mad satisfying with how much space you could free up. And running DupeFinder on Starkiller Base would throw up a ton of stuff. And then watching the defrag screen fterwards? Oh man.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:59 PM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


My favorite movie computer UI story will always be the wireframe Manhattan in Escape from New York.
posted by ckape at 4:03 PM on May 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm in the midst of Mass Effect: Andromeda and it hurts me how the interfaces that the characters use are so much better than the ones the game foists on the player.
posted by ejs at 4:05 PM on May 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Johnny Mnemonic has the Best. UI. Evar.
posted by farlukar at 4:14 PM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I saw a guy in a suit wearing a VR headset*in public the other day, so Cyberpunk times are upon us.

* well, one of the phones ones
posted by Artw at 4:21 PM on May 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


You can tell these UIs are improbable fakes because in reality the bean counters wouldn't set aside enough people, time and money to create a cool looking GUI library from scratch, especially one that's device and species independent across entire solar systems

Eh, that seems consistent with the totalitarian empires that predominate tv and film science fiction.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:06 PM on May 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Virtual Reali-Dean?
posted by D.Billy at 7:05 PM on May 4, 2017


Enhance 224 to 176.

Enhance. Stop.

Move in. Stop,

Pull out, track right. Stop.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:14 PM on May 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


zompist: "In the future, no one has read Tufte."

Based on real-world interfaces, I'm not sure anyone in the present has read Tufte, either.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:41 PM on May 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


The comment in the previously about the SF interface being designed for an audience, instead of a user, is one I need to remember. The Minority Report UI, in which a large amount of physical motion is required to do simple things, is the one that annoys me most. None of the ones in this post bother me that much.

In the real world the use of mobile device paradigms is killing me. Maybe it's just "get off my lawn" syndrome but I deal with scientific data; big buttons*, plentiful spacing and relatively slow, animated transitions on drill downs are so very frustrating. I'm convinced designers of these thing want to mimic wildly popular "new" stuff and it possibly demos well to VPs who browse information from a company portal while on a plane. But it's less compelling for many who need study data.



*"non-data ink" to borrow Tufte's term.
posted by mark k at 7:59 PM on May 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


When it comes to incomprehensible UI in SF, I go on an odyssey back in time to 2001.
posted by zooropa at 8:53 PM on May 4, 2017


"Siri, are you plotting to murder me?"
posted by Artw at 9:04 PM on May 4, 2017


Not surprisingly, when Minority Report came out I kept hearing people talking about the UI and wanting to implement it in real life.
posted by ckape at 9:14 PM on May 4, 2017


Oh god, after Minority Report people DID implement it. I was at a show where someone had a working (as well as you might imagine) demo of a system, which they cheerfully admitted they were aiming at sheriffs' offices in the mid-west.

We're now a good ten to twenty years into a time when we can build pretty much any form of screen-based UI we can think up; the problem of moving shapes around a plane in arbitrary ways for tuppence has been long solved.

And what do we spend all our time staring at and prodding? That ain't going to change. Skiffy hasn't got the guts to admit it nor the imagination to move away to whatever the next stage of symbiosis might be.
posted by Devonian at 9:26 AM on May 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


Apple's first generation of iPod Touch felt pretty obviously inspired by Minority Report. Pinch to zoom, swipe, etc. Same gesture vocabulary, just on a handheld screen instead of a huge holographic display.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:00 AM on May 5, 2017


A lot of that stuff was floating around in UI labs from the 80s onwards, but I wouldn't be suprised if Minority report wasn;t the thing taht lit a fire under peoples asses to get something to market. Plus the technology just plain got better, of course - early touchscreens were wretched.
posted by Artw at 10:25 AM on May 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


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