Death of the Desktop This presentation focused on the idea that interface design needs to consider the science of cognetics (the ergonomics of the mind) to more adequately create experiences that are beneficial to a user. Two scientific studies were noted: GOM modeling and Information efficiency. The presented gave this definition of an interface: the way you accomplish with a product - what you do and how it responds to you. To a user the interface is the product, so the experience is dependent upon how successful the user is in achieving a goal. (Observation: When an interface is simple, you don't notice it.)

The presenter gave this definition of What An Interface Does:

• Create Content
• Navigate Content
• Select Content
• Transform Content

A number of examples were given, and some questions were asked to try and poke a hole into this definition, but most were satisfied that these four are fundamentally correct.

The presenter than presented Raskin's Rules of Interfaces: (with apologies to I. Asimov)

1. An interface shall not harm your content or through inaction to allow your content to come to harm
2. An interface shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than necessary
3. An interface shall not allow itself to get into a state when it cannot manipulate content

(The irony of this presentation was that it was given on a Windows computer, which (IMHO) breaks every one of these rules.)

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Labels: design, humanized, interface, sxsw

  ¶ 11:00 PM