Make It So

Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction

Nathan Shedroff, Christopher Noessel

• Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781933820767
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Web Design

Many designers enjoy the interfaces seen in science fiction films and television shows. Freed from the rigorous constraints of designing for real users, sci-fi production designers develop blue-sky interfaces that are inspiring, humorous, and even instructive. By carefully studying these “outsider” user interfaces, designers can derive lessons that make their real-world designs more cutting edge and successful.

CHAPTER 1

Learning Lessons from Science Fiction

What Is an Interface? 3

Which Science Fiction? 3

What Counts? 5

Why Look to Fiction? 6

The Database 7

Finding Inspiration in Science Fiction 11

Let’s Begin 13

Science fiction and interface design were made for each other. An interface is the primary way a sci-fi audience understands how the characters in stories use nifty, speculative technologies. And interface design (cautiously) loves to see fresh ideas about potential technologies unbound by real-world constraints writ large in the context of exciting stories.

This gives interfaces in the real world an interesting and evolving relationship with interfaces seen in sci-fi. With technology advancing quickly in the real world, sci-fi makers must continually invent more fantastic technologies with newer and more exciting interfaces. As audiences around the world become more technologically sophisticated, sci-fi makers must go to greater lengths to ensure that their interfaces are believable and engaging. And as users compare sci-fi to the interfaces they use every day, they’re left to dream about the day when their technology, too, will become indistinguishable from magic.

But the relationship between the two is also an unfair one. Sci-fi can use smoke, mirrors, and computer-generated imagery to make things look incredibly exciting while ignoring practical constraints like plausibility, usability, cost, and supporting infrastructure. A sci-fi interface is rarely shown for more than a few seconds, but we use real-world interfaces, such as word-processing or spreadsheet software, for hours on end, year after year. Interfaces in the real world must serve users in an unforgiving marketplace, where lousy interfaces can quickly kill a product. But those same users might overlook a lousy interface in a great movie with no questions asked.

The relationship is also one of reciprocal influence. Every popular real-world interface adds to what audiences think of as “current” and challenges sci-fi interface makers to go even further. Additionally, as audiences become more technologically literate, they come to expect interfaces that are more believable. Sci-fi creators are required to pay more attention to the believability of these interfaces, otherwise audiences begin to doubt the “reality” created, and the story itself becomes less believable. This raises the stakes for sci-fi. Real-world interface designers are wise to understand this dynamic, because audience expectations can work the same way for their creations.

Make It So: Interface Lessons from Science Fiction investigates this relationship to find a practical answer to this question: What can real-world interface designers learn from the interfaces found in science fiction?

To begin to answer this question, we first need to define what we mean by “interface” and “science fiction.”

What Is an Interface?

The term interface can refer to a number of different things, even in the world of software. In this book, we use it specifically to mean user interface as it pertains to human–computer interaction. With most people’s computing experience centering on mobile phones, laptop computers, and desktop computers, familiar examples would be the keyboards, mice, touch screens, audible feedback, and screen designs of these objects. We generally mean the same thing in sci-fi, though the inputs and outputs of speculative technology stray pretty quickly from these familiar references. For example, does a hologram or volumetric projection count as a screen? And where’s the keyboard in a Star Trek tricorder?

A more abstract definition allows us to look at these fictional technologies and speak to the right parts. The working definition we’re using to define an interface is “all parts of a thing that enable its use.” This lets us confidently address the handle and single button of a lightsaber as the interface, while not having to address the glowing blade in the same breath. While researching this book, we’ve had this definition in mind.

This definition leads us to include some aspects of interfaces that we might not ordinarily consider in a more conventional, screen-and-mouse definition. For instance, the handle of a blaster is three-dimensional and doesn’t do anything on its own, but if that’s how you hold it, it’s definitely part of the interface. This means that, over the course of our investigation, we may touch on issues of industrial design.

Similarly, we may run into problems with the organization of information that we see on sci-fi screens, which is part of what enables use. Does the character’s screen make sense? Addressing this question means we may touch on issues of information design.

We may also need to look at the connection between the actions a character performs and the output they see—their intent and the outcome. Interactions over time are a critical element of the interface, and this requires us to evaluate the interaction design.

The “interface,” then, is the combination of all of these aspects, though we try to focus on the most novel, fundamental, or important of them.

Which Science Fiction?

Science fiction is a huge genre. It would take years and years to read, watch, and hear it all. Even before we had a chance to step back and study all we’ve taken in, there would be even more new material requiring our attention. (Oh, but for a Matrix-style uploader: “I know all of sci-fi!”) Fortunately, looking specifically for interfaces in sci-fi reduces the number of candidates for this survey. The first way it does so is through the media of sci-fi.

For the purposes of this investigation, to evaluate an interface we have to see and hear it. This is so that we can understand what the user must take into account when trying to make sense of it. Literature and books often describe the most important parts of interfaces, but often fail to describe details, which each reader might imagine quite differently; this makes interfaces described in writing nearly impossible to evaluate. Take this description from H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), for example:

“This little affair,” said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, “is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.” He pointed to the part with his finger. “Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another.”

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. “It’s beautifully made,” he said.

“It took two years to make,” retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: “Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table, too, and satisfy yourselves that there is no trickery. I don’t want to waste this model, and then be told I’m a quack.”

Although this description of the interface is useful, it’s incomplete. Are the levers in easy reach? Are they a meter long or a couple of millimeters? Do they press away from the Traveller, toward him, or parallel to his chest? How are they labeled? Are there forces in effect while time traveling that make the machine easier or harder to operate? The archetype that the reader imagines is probably sufficient for the purposes of the story, but to really evaluate and learn from it requires much more detail. For these reasons, we decided not to consider interfaces from written science fiction.

For similar reasons, we need to see the character’s use of an interface over time. If we were to evaluate only still pictures, we might not know, for example, how information appears on a screen, or what sounds provide feedback, or whether a button is pressed momentarily or held in position. Comic books, concept art, and graphic novels sometimes supply this information, but unless their creators provide unusual levels of detail, the resolution is too crude and the interstices of time make it difficult to get a complete sense of how an interface is intended to work. Due to this complication, we have not considered comic books, graphic novels, or concept art either.

And finally, even with visual depictions across time, as in animation, the interface needs to remain consistent from scene to scene. Otherwise, we would have to interpret the intended interface (much like with written sci-fi) and risk conflicting, confusing conclusions. For this reason, we’ve mostly avoided hand-drawn, animated interfaces like those found in anime or Futurama. Of course, these problems can crop up in film and TV sci-fi, too, but for most 3D-animated or live-action interfaces, the depictions are consistent enough to evaluate them as single systems.

These three requirements—that the medium be audiovisual, time-based, and consistent—leave us with 3D-animated or live-action sci-fi for cinema and television. Sci-fi in these media give us candidate interfaces that we can examine for design lessons.

What Counts?

A trickier question is, What counts as science fiction? Of course, some are obvious, such as tales of people racing spaceships between planets, shooting ray guns at villains, and making out with the comelier of the aliens. But what about the spy genre? From self-destructor bags to pen guns to remote-controlled Aston Martins, they certainly feature speculative technology. And what about steampunk fiction and superhero movies? Or slapstick comedy sci-fi like Spaceballs? Media properties in each of these genres contain all sorts of gadgets with interfaces that could bear some kind of examination.

These are good questions, but ultimately we’ve avoided the academic pursuit of defining science fiction and tried to remain purposefully agnostic. Generally speaking, if the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) defines a movie or a TV show as science fiction, it has been up for consideration.

Occasionally we’ve looked outside of sci-fi, comparing interfaces for real-world systems, products, and prototypes with similar goals or functions, when it’s relevant and space allows. We’ve also looked to speculative in...