At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction.
During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they are absolutely right. We are on an interface craze. Everything has a twitter panel, which isn't a bad idea, but most designs nowadays obstruct regular interaction to ease a few corner use cases.
Blogs and newspapers hide their content beneath social buttons. Current "Smart TVs" are bad as TVs though they have great facebook support.
But, 99% of the time you want to watch the TV, and if you need to press some buttons for that, you're actually delaying and difficulting the main use case.
Can I mention Apple at this point? Apple is both hated and loved because of its interface design, but I think they're spot on. If they can define the best interaction patterns with a TV and program then on their future iTV, they might eat the market.
First off, I liked the article. He's right in that visual UI should only be looked at after everything possible has been gleaned from process.
As for TVs, I think most who are designing the interfaces are still stuck "inside the box". They need to take a couple steps back and learn how modern people use the interfaces. This is one of the main reasons I dropped cable and now feed my TV from a web-connected PC. The cable box interface was a thick jungle of rectangular boxes when searching or filtering should be forefront. We have the technology!
My grandfather, a regular country man, is horrorized by the amount of choices he has.
Nowadays there is a remote for the TV with a lot of buttons, another for the video decoder, with more buttons, and another for the radio, with yes, more buttons.
He was used to have a machine which worked upon being switched on. The TV had buttons labeled 1-10 for the ten channels. The radio only needed a dial and a volume slider.
He can't use the radio anymore and, with his age, he's starting to get stuck when he presses the wrong TV button (teletext, menus, etc). We taught him to turn the TV off and on again.
More choices is not always better. Interfaces need to be simple or nonexistant. And, by the way, TV manufacturers should ship TVs with two remotes. The regular one, and another for seniors, containing only buttons 1-10 and the volume control.
Seniors, for some reason, think they'll blow the machine up if they press the wrong button. And seniority is where we're all heading...
My grandparents always lament how complicated things are these days. They too just want a simple 1-10 and on/off remote. These do exist, but I keep reminding them why it's not possible for them: they have cable. And a DVR. And a DVD player. And a sound bar.
In the days of simple on/off TVs, these didn't exist. I know they're not going to give up the Food Network, ESPN, Nickelodeon for the great-grandkids, CSI, etc. Things are more complicated now for a reason. When there were only 3 channels, you only needed one remote with 10 buttons on it. I agree that interfaces have gotten out of control (I can enter the menu on my TV without the remote, but I can't exit it?), but the reality is, you get features or you get simplicity. There's no way to control 3 or 4 disparate systems with all their capabilities with only 10 buttons and no on-screen interface.
Yes, it's not really possible with current products. But part of the point is that we should strive to make it possible; the original 6-button Apple remote should be the minimum and every additional button needs a significant justification for its existence, such as volume control.
On/off? Make everything power efficient, turn off after some idle time or detecting that no one is around, reliable auto power on across devices (HDMI-CEC is terribly unreliable), reduce "on" times to no more than two seconds, etc. (requiring a full minute for a TV to boot is insane)
Fast forward / rewind? Reuse left/right arrows. Heck Netflix on my TV doesn't even let you use the dedicated fast forward / play / etc buttons - you have to use the d-pad.
Number pad / channel control? Depends on the person. Cable's dying though, so it makes slightly less sense each day.
3D button? Detect whether glasses are being used. Or develop useful non-eyestrain inducing 3D in the first place.
Widescreen button? Ditch legacy hookups already!
Closed caption button? Who wants to toggle this often enough to warrant a dedicated button? (Yes I know broadcasters are retarded enough that you need to, you shouldn't need to though)
Device selection? Maybe one input selection button. But the button presses should always go to the intended device without having to push another button on the remote. Yes, HDMI-CEC sucks for this again (big surprise)
How about ten (or so) nice big buttons with OLED key caps? I've used rather remarkably simple smart remotes in the past; their only real problem being that they used resistive, early-generation LCD touch screens, which are not great from a tactile perspective. A simple, clearly labelled remote that's capable of changing context beats the heck out of three or four devices with dozens of tiny, poorly-labelled rubber chicklets.
It doesn't necessarily beat the heck out of anything. Tools with changing contexts, be it a remote or software, are highly confusing for users. They always have to remember in which state they are, especially hard when there is bad visibility (like a remote you want to press blindly). vi isn't hated by so many without a cause.
The PS3 XMB interface is still one of my favorite simple interfaces to use on a TV screen, especially since it works with only a directional gamepad and a few buttons.
During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they are absolutely right. We are on an interface craze. Everything has a twitter panel, which isn't a bad idea, but most designs nowadays obstruct regular interaction to ease a few corner use cases.
Blogs and newspapers hide their content beneath social buttons. Current "Smart TVs" are bad as TVs though they have great facebook support.
But, 99% of the time you want to watch the TV, and if you need to press some buttons for that, you're actually delaying and difficulting the main use case.
Can I mention Apple at this point? Apple is both hated and loved because of its interface design, but I think they're spot on. If they can define the best interaction patterns with a TV and program then on their future iTV, they might eat the market.
What do you think?