octane
I have issues, OK!
I don't know what it is, genius he may be, but he looks like a bit of odd-ball to me. Anyway, character assassination aside, he opens his mouth and words emerge...
jeff Raskin talks .. again...
- Thread starter octane
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octane said:
I am amazed that they still interview this guy.
Within 10 years he will have claimed to have invented the Apple II as well.
Another interesting thing is that he compares himself to Edison and the light bulb... especially since it has been shown that Edison stole the idea and research from someone else and just managed to get the patent first.
What a load of self-aggrandizing hooey!
Arden
Where mah "any" keys at?
Hmm... I can see how some of his ideas might work, like the fact that current, "modern" UI's (which really haven't changed drastically since the 80's when they first came out) are, really, terrible pieces of work. But I don't know about his solution. It sounds simple enough... all you need to do is buy the "commands" which are then available to everything... but that sounds like all you need to do is download a bunch of DLL's and your new "program" will work well. And we all know what a headache DLL's can cause.
I think I'll download THE and see what it can do next time I boot into OS X... but right now, I don't know, really.
I think I'll download THE and see what it can do next time I boot into OS X... but right now, I don't know, really.
octane
I have issues, OK!
Arden said:
Although is theory is very much in line with how Unix works [lots of little tools and applications working together], exposing that kind of functionality by way of a usable GUI is going to be quite a challenge.
The major obstacle isn't user uptake; I'm sure such an idea could snowball out in the open source community, the bigger problem is getting the major ISV's to move their applications over to this way of doing things.
There's simply too much invested in the current way of doing things.
After all, look at the qwerty keyboard. The idea behind the qwerty keyboard layout was to slow people down [typing too fast caused the key levels to entangle over the tape head]
To change things now would cost a lot of time and money.
That said, the object way of doing things was explored by Apple - OpenDoc.
Change may come, but it's going to need 2 things; lots of traction and lots of momentum...
LordOphidian
Adjutant On-Line
jarinteractive
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In his book "The Humane Interface" (I read it for a paper I did on UI design last year), Raskin actually brings up some very good-and very different-ideas for a next generation UI. To implement many of his ideas (that go beyond his THE project's scope) would require a lot of AI, but would be very cool if implemented well.
-JARinteractive
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jarinteractive
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The main thing I remember is his idea of a "zooming" interface, where instead of viewing lists of files you would see groups of files. The files would be grouped intelligently, so you theoretically wouldn't forget where you put things. With the interface you could zoom in to see smaller groups, and then individual files which would become editable (through the "command sets" that he mentioned, as opposed to a separate application). This would be a radically different interface than what we currently have, and it would take a huge amount of design and coding to pull of well. I think it is a cool idea--although I'm quite satisfied with OS X, currently.
He also brought up a bunch of ideas to improve developer tools, system messages, and quite a bit more but I don't recall the specifics.
-JARinteractive
He also brought up a bunch of ideas to improve developer tools, system messages, and quite a bit more but I don't recall the specifics.
-JARinteractive
karavite
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gerbick said:
Hey, watch it there! ;-)
The zooming interface is not in the least an original idea by Raskin. The original idea for this type of interface was developed by Geroge Furnas in the early 1980s of Bell Labs and now faculty at the University of Michigan School of Information. Furnas had a really elegant idea - the best way to manage a complex information structure was to give the user the ability to zoom in and out at certain levels of detail while maintaining an overall view of the entire structure. This idea of "Focus + Context" is the basis of Furnas's Fisheye Views and he developed algorthims to create fisheyes on almost every type of information structure you can imagine - pure text, networks... Furnas's work is the critical basis for the entire field of Information Visualization. Did Raskin cite Furnas - I'm sure he did (or hope so). There are tons of researchers developing all kinds of amazing info viz systems, but very few are available commercially. Hopefully, this will change. Here are some links:
Furnas's original unpublished 1982 paper as a pdf: http://www.si.umich.edu/~furnas/Papers/FisheyeOriginalTM.pdf
Furnas's 1986 published version of the Fisheye paper as a pdf: http://www.si.umich.edu/~furnas/Papers/FisheyeCHI86.pdf
A university course page with some background on Info-Viz: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2002/cmsc838s/tichi/fisheye.html
A page with many links to info viz research and applications: http://www.otal.umd.edu/Olive/
Also, if you have a PC, you can download and run a trial version of a so-so info viz web browser - Groker: http://www.groxis.com/service/grok/
For the mac, there is one app I know of that it not well done, but gets across the idea of a 3d info viz file system app for OS X - "3DOSX" at: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/macwarriors/
jarinteractive
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Raskin probably did cite sources for the zooming interface, and I'm pretty sure that he stated that many of his ideas are improvements on existing ideas. THE is just the first place that I saw the zooming interface. Raskin's text editing interface (and related) changes are the main focus of the book (and the project).
-JARinteractive
-JARinteractive
karavite
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jarinteractive said:
I have nothing against Raskin and like a lot of his stuff, but there are so many usability/UI "gurus" out there selling their ideas and expertise, while much of their ideas are based on established research by others. A lot of it goes unclaimed in order to jack up the consulting fees and promote oneself as the leading expert! I suppose any new field goes through this kind of thing, but it annoys me. I just thought a little history on "zooming interfaces" was called for. Here is an interesting article on the subject of all the competing usability gurus:
http://www.ok-cancel.com/archives/post/2004/02/why_we_need_hci_gurus.html
octane
I have issues, OK!
karavite said:
But the theme of this thread is that the field isn't entirely new. It's at least 30 or 40 years old or more.
I'd imagine that there be some level of maturity by now.
Disregarding the sizable task that is getting the main operating systems to adopt any new look & feel [if that term applies?] I think the bigger problem -- almost Herculean, in fact -- is getting the main ISV's to move their applications across to any new look & feel.
Who would be brave enough to tell the likes of Adobe, Macromedia and yes .. even Microsoft's various internal software divisions to make the leap?
It's a monumental task that may well find its solution in the open source community.
Given that the current state of GUI on Linux is in such flux, there's still room for one more. One more that could well take a credible lead if it is a viable method of interacting with your computer...
Let's say Apple would adopt a new concept for the user interface in Mac OS X 10.5 in 2005. They'd borrow from OpenDoc, they'd borrow from what Raskin mentioned... They'd build new iLife application versions according to those new paradigms and drop in another one or two applications. Not too far-fetched so far. They'd also go out and spread the word about this new concept at WWDC 2005 when Mac OS X 10.5 would first be presented.
Now, this wouldn't mean that Adobe Photoshop CS (9.0) would suddenly stop working! It would only mean that readily-available applications would not make use of those new things (yet). However if that technology and concept is _so_ good that it'll transform the way we work with computers, I'm sure Adobe and other application providers would not let the chance go by! I'm sure Quark would take another four years until it would finally release a version of XPress making use of it, but by then, InDesign might have taken over the crown of DTP.
What I mean is: A shift in these things don't have to mean a complete overhaul of existing systems. Rather, those steps should be taken one by one. Give people time...
Now, this wouldn't mean that Adobe Photoshop CS (9.0) would suddenly stop working! It would only mean that readily-available applications would not make use of those new things (yet). However if that technology and concept is _so_ good that it'll transform the way we work with computers, I'm sure Adobe and other application providers would not let the chance go by! I'm sure Quark would take another four years until it would finally release a version of XPress making use of it, but by then, InDesign might have taken over the crown of DTP.
What I mean is: A shift in these things don't have to mean a complete overhaul of existing systems. Rather, those steps should be taken one by one. Give people time...
octane
I have issues, OK!
fryke said:
You end up with the OS X equivalent of the Classic environment, but not as much of a kludge.
I think the thing that's going to scare the brass pants of Apple and anyone else is the two-faced OS. Could call it Janus.
I could imagine Apple cringing at the thought of implementing another Classic, but it would need to be done.
At times like these, great bravery is needed...
karavite
Registered
octane said:
I was speaking specifically about interface design, interaction design, user experience, usability, user centered design, human-computer interaction, computer-human interaction.., as being a new field as applied to computer interface design. What's the difference between all of these names? Not much, other than each title is adopted by various factions, interests, companies or experts. I think that right there shows a lack of maturity in the field. They need to decide on a name!
In addition, though companies like Apple have led the way in usability, many others now take it very seriously, but most development projects (such as within a specific company or institution) treat usability as a pain in the neck, apply half baked methods and/or with an outdated aggressive attitude that results in failure followed by lame explanations of "We tried usability and it didn't work." In turn, many usability people fail to make usability *usable* to developers, business interests and others. Though usability has many established methods, there is a lot of work to do, but a great deal of this work is really about developing a process that works. I am a usability professional and I think I am darn good by simply thinking of my developers as "users of usability" - how can I address their needs, constraints, issues along with the users of the system? It's really simple, but so many usability experts treat developers as "the enemy." Don't even get me started on so many unqualified people passing themselves off as "usability experts" in the post dot com era!!! Any way, I am way off the topic of new GUIs!
I also used to think open source could lead the way in UI design and many neat things in *nix exist and/or started there (multiple desktops for example). I wrote a huge paper on this in grad school and was really geeked about it. Linux is certainly being taken far more seriously now, but I am still waiting for it to be applied to the desktop and business apps. I think it would be great within many business applications and just needs someone to take the plunge. I still have hopes, however, nobody has yet to take the lead on this (though wasn't Raskin involved in making a new Linux GUI and environment a few years ago? What was that called?). When you think about it, the company that has REALLY made *nix usable (though you could argue it is NOT open source) is good old Apple and OS X!
