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INTERFACES | Noah Brier

Art in the Interface

A giant quote about the future art of interace design and an introduction of the new NoahBrier.com glossary.

August 5, 2005 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 6 COMMENTS

Tonight my mom called me up and asked me to tell her what I meant by "interface." She explained to me that I need to remember that "there are regular people reading your page" and proceeded to call me a geek (can you believe it?). Anyway, after explaining for a while in lots of different ways (from elevator buttons to the trash can on your desktop), I finally got to a point to read her this paragraph from Interface Culture which I had been meaning to share with everyone anyway (especially after my long conversation with Josh Porter):
The most profound change ushered in by the digital revolution will not involve bells and whistles or new programming tricks. It will not come in the form of a 3-D Web browser or voice recognition or artificial intelligence. The most profound change will lie with out generic expectations about the interface itself. We will come to think of interface design as a kind of art form -- perhaps the art form of the next century. And with that broader shift will come hundreds of corollary effects, effects that trickle down into a broad cross section of everyday life, altering our storytelling appetites, our sense of physical space, our taste in music, the design of our cities. Many of these changes will be too subtle or gradual for most people to notice -- or rather, we'll notice the changes but we won't perceive their relationship to the interface, because the various elements will appear to belong to different categories, like so many aisles in a grocery store. But the history of technolculture is the history of such interminglings, the unlikely secondary effects of new machines rippling out to transform the society that surrounds them.
Wow.

Instead of commenting on this (which I'll reserve for another time), I would like to inform everyone that in response to my mother's recommendation, I have also added a glossary to the site. I will try to define any words that I think are less than usual there. If you run into anything you want defined, please just let me know. Thanks.

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COMMENTS

1Joshua Porter

Given that the Interface Culture book is over half a decade old, I would say that Johnson suffers from what many really intelligent people suffer from: being ahead of their time.

August 5, 2005

2Noah Brier

You're not kidding. It's funny when you read that kind of stuff and you say to yourself, "how the hell did he think of that then." I always have that feeling when I read McLuhan, whose ideas are still revolutionary thirty-something years later.

August 5, 2005

3Richard MacManus

You neglected to say whether you managed to explain to your mother what you mean by 'interface'. I've read that paragraph quoted above twice now and I still don't have a clear understanding of it ;-) That's the trouble with McLuhan too - he may have innovative ideas, but he didn't make it very easy for the rest of us to grok them!

Anyway, my point here is that although I think you and Josh are onto something here - I wouldn't mind a more down-to-earth explanation to the ones in Johnson's book. e.g. I really liked your example of an iPod interface. How about taking another example and really expanding on that? Enough theory, give us some scenarios ;-)

August 8, 2005

4Noah Brier

I can certainly give it a shot. Can you just help me out a little and give me a better explanation of just what I need to explain? Is it specifically about how I see interfaces playing a more prominent role in the future?

Thanks.

August 8, 2005

5Richard MacManus

"Is it specifically about how I see interfaces playing a more prominent role in the future?"

yes, that's it!

e.g. when Johnson talks about "the unlikely secondary effects of new machines rippling out to transform the society that surrounds them" -- what sort of "new machines" do you think we'll start to see? Why are they an "art form"?

Perhaps because I haven't yet read the Johnson book (but I will now I've heard you and Josh rave about it), I'm struggling to grok what it is exactly that you're refering to. Interfaces within interfaces is good - but how do you think this will evolve -- in 5 years, say. Hard questions, I know, but I'm certainly interested in your thoughts on this.

August 8, 2005

6Noah Brier

Got it. That's a good (and very hard) question. I'll think about it and get you that answer (to the best of my ability).

August 8, 2005