100 Years of Fictional UI - Were They ALL Wrong?
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- Let's dive deeper into the history of Fictional UI (mostly on science fiction).
Where did our modern interfaces come from? Were all the predictions wrong?
Hope you enjoy!
// helpful links:
Scifi UI framework: arwes.dev/
Guide to HUDs and GUIs: www.hudsandgui...
Territory Studio: territorystudi...
LCARS: www.thelcars.com/
First Star Trek TOS footage: vimeo.com/1202...
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#fictionalui #sciencefiction #uidesign #lcars
Music (Support the artists):
pixabay.com/mu...
I'm curious, are you into scifi? If yes, like what? If no, WHY NOT?
Star Trek. It has been instilling hope in millions of people for generations. And that's not an easy thing to do. It is the inspiration of many doctors and scientists.
Yep. Because who doesn’t want to explore all the possibilities of space and technology. :) all the ways it can go right, and serve as warnings for all the ways it can be misused.
Yep. Alita: Battle Angel, Interstellar, Minority Report, Total Recall (2012), Tron Legacy, Ready Player One, and The Matrix Trilogy
No. Mostly cus I haven't got much exposure. From the list of movies and games in this video, I only know the Matrix. Even that was a recent watch.
Hi from France. Love your job! To answer your question: I'm a big fan of scifi. I love Foundation form Azimov but Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have a special place in my heart.
I've worked on The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Siren, Snowpiercer and more as an FUI designer, so this was super fun and interesting to watch. The reason we've been seeing blue interfaces since Minority Report and keep seeing them still today isn't actually the fault of us designers, it's the directors who keep asking for it. Because at the end of the day, FUIs are storytelling tools before anything else. That's also the reason you see so many incredibly cluttered FUIs - it conveys that the user is smart and extremely knowledgeable, that what they're doing is important and/or highly technical at just a glance. We don't want the audience to be able to make sense of the UI at a glance, we just want them to get the idea of what's happening, or to tell a story point (The Martian: "The MAV is tilting, only 2 more degrees and we're screwed!"). However, at the same time, us designers to strive to come up with new ideas and try to predict where the future lies, in terms of UI design. Which, at least to me, has become very difficult lately. All the stuff I'd expect to be a thing in 20 years from now is coming now or already here. So what's next?
thank you for your insights :D
Interesting angle would be how culture affects a UI? Even reading order would change things.
that actually makes a lot of sense, cluttered Sci-fi UIs make it seem like the character is too busy multitasking to actually close all their tabs
I think video games are a good spot to draw inspiration from. Specifically, MMORPGs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. Those games can have really cluttered user interfaces, but experienced players can still navigate them near-effortlessly.
The core insight I'd take from video games, however, is probably from the Wii. After a quick and intense boom of motion controls, people collectively grew out of them real fast. It turns out that when given the choice between a complicated full-body movement or pressing a single button, people prefer the latter. Convenience is the name of the game!
Transparency is a pet peeve of me, it doesn't happen because it's impossible, no, it doesn't happen because it's annoying to view.
It's cool, but annoying.
The original Star Trek pilot showed Spock using a hand waving gesture to change images on a screen. I always thought that was so cool and they never did it again in the series. I always imagine some executive was confused by it and told them not to do it anymore.
I just watched Metropolis and I don't remember that video phone.
That was AWESOME, thank you!
Fantastic video as usual! Could someone please share the name of the website displayed on screen at 10:30 ? Thanks!
Dribbble
Oh, it's just Dribbble! My bad. I don't know why I always forget about the existence of this website. Thanks 🚀
Video start at 11:15
u should have mentioned mech anime it has some interesting ui's
I can tell how much passion you have for this, how much joy you find in making it, and in gathering the data. I'm not a content creator but a Ph.D. researcher, and I can tell you for sure, making this quality content is not easy at all. You are talented, please post more!
THANK you :D glad you enjoyed it
@@juxtopposedI can’t tell if you are male or female.
@@cyberhax2480the voice definitely feels "female" and not ai generated 😂. But maybe there are more people behind this channel? 🤔
@@cyberhax2480 They're a cat.
@@zenlanfleek6580 Obviously a cat.
A very interesting development in fictional UIs is the move to retrofuturism, in shows like Severance, Loki, Silo. It's a breath of fresh air after all the glowing blue sci-fi.
Steampunk interfaces.
I was thinking the same, we left behind a good source of inspiration and designers are acknowledged that
You know, I never even realised your profile picture was half HAL. That is so awesome
:D
And other half is a human eye (duh) because it’s Juxtaposing humans and tech
Sorry but what's HAL??
HAL 9000 from 2001@@arrowai
@@ArtemisAYO thanks :)
I‘d love to see an video about game UI and HUDs. I find it difficult to keep track of information in „realtime“-action games. Even the health indicator can go unnoticed if the game itself requires quick reactions, which ironically is the scenario where health is important.
will do!
I've seen a video focusing on this but i don't remember by who and it was a while ago. Although it was covering more about why some modern game UIs tend to have a similar boxy look, but i recall it did have some background on the development.
Haven't developers solved it by adding effects like blood on edges etc to indicate that you are really low on health? Followed up by sound effects.
@@eduardrosenberg7190absolutely not, those are distracting and not an adequate solution to your health and ammo being hidden way off in the corner of increasingly wide screens
@@coolbean9880 something cool that Mirror's Edge (2008, not the reboot) did was have your health be shown by the saturation of the colours. The more desaturated your world got the more you should duck in and hide.
As a mechanical engineer myself, I have to say the cluttered hundred windows all over the place aesthetic is incredibly real for technical fields. Everyone in my department is supplied with 3 monitors by default because everyone uses all of them. Browsers, email, instant communication, Excels, Words, PDF's, and all the applications we use to actually *DO* analyses, we're spliting up each screen into windowed corners!
You just need to use i3, multiplexers, or script your environment. I know DevOps Engineers who prefer a small 15" screen. It's not a matter of screens, it's a matter of poor selection of workflow tools.
Great video and explanation of how much UI changed over course of years. Keep it up
glad you liked it!
That thumbnail picture look so sick!
✨✨ thanksss
how come the quality of your channel is so good ever since the first video? editing, presentation, writing, audio and even your voice are perfect, how?
Thats what we all wanna know!!!!!!!
Some people enter YouTubing with experience in video and art edits.
And some people who are more introverted wait until they're good.
Looking at myself 😅👉👈
It’s likely that they have had youtube channels before this one or edited for others before starting this channel! :)
I would at least be surprised if they didn’t have some experience beforehand
At least for editing, it's her design experience for sure. Other things like writing, might come with a UX background
@@kkd0099 you must know her.
Another video so soon?! I'm not complaining!
WE'RE SO BACK
WE’RE SO BACK
a whole channel dedicated the study of UI/UX? with a passionate storyteller and clean video style?!
subbed.
You're such a good storyteller, you make videos super interesting and beautiful!
There are so many cool design trends in videogames imo. Like, I really can not wait to see what bungie comes up with for the reboot of Marathon. The original from 1994 had did some pretty revolutionary things( Like using a mouse for aiming, but aesthetically too). The trailer for the new one looks really promising. I believe its aesthetic is called "Nasapunk", but it reminds me of mirrors edge. Bright and distinct colours, lots of white... I feel like thats gonna be a trend in a few years or so.
Do one on video game HUDs and UIs please! So much to cover! Even stuff like the adoption of video game controllers for non video game devices.
will do!
@@juxtopposed Persona 5 Royal/3 Reload UI video letsgooooooooooooo
We live in a UI dystopia where most UI are aimed at vertical phone screens, not even working well if just you flip the same phone to landscape mode.
The topic of UIs is way bigger than just GUIs though. As a part of my MSc in system design, we had to embrace HMI as a whole, including interaction design, physical controls, labeling, functional and logical grouping, through colors, blocking, lighting _and_ digital GUIs of course. Sound and haptic are also a big part of feedback designs.
LCARS is now a fully functional Linux tiling window manager.
Awesome video!
I will say, to me cluttered UI still makes sense. Just think of all the software designed for specific tasks (video editing, CAD software, programming IDEs) that still opt for cluttered UI because so many tools would otherwise be behind a pesky dropdown menu. I think that will probably stay this way as long as we dont have a direct brain interface or something
True, I hate searching through multiple levels of menus! Even things like cars and cameras are guilty of that now.
I remember watching a video about some guy ranting over games/film to display futuristic design with just slapping obtuse angles (often 35 degrees) everywhere and I cant oversee it since then. 10:41 is a good representation of that
A point I want to make about 'cluttered' UI in scenes such as Minority Report. I'm thinking that is more of a personal desktop. Like anyone's personal space, I'm sure we all have things spread out, i.e. +50 open tabs in the browser.
I know there are certain tools already integrated into modern DE, but I'd love to see more focus on automated UI layouts depending on what task / multi monitor setup / preferred interface (keyboard, mouse, touch) that help seamlessly switch to the most optimal layout
1:01 Correction: The first video game ever made was a game of Draughts (checkers) made by British computer scientist Christopher Strachey in the summer of 1952. Here is an in-depth, hour-long documentary about the topic: ua-cam.com/video/uHQ4WCU1WQc/v-deo.html
I think a lot of relatively recent UI in games has been feeding on the nostalgia of the 1970s-80s with strong emphasis on vector-like graphics, and that as time goes on we'll start to see more "Windows Classic" style blocky UI, followed by more of the clear and roundy UIs reminiscent of Windows Vista.
I have no idea why but I've always loved the UI in massive control rooms. Like those you can see in central dogma in evangelion, the sidonia's bridge in knights of sidonia, and the bridge of one of the arks in the godzilla 3d animated trilogy.
I'm an artist and designer that's been looking at UI design and evolutions as a past time since not maybe people pay attention to it. Well unless its in the gamer community. Glad to find someone else share the joy of Fictional designs that inspire the world around us.
8:47 I've never heard anyone pronounce "repetitive" like that
very nice video !
just a little complaint (srry), if possible, could you render the videos at 60 fps ? in parts where static elements move fast enough, they appear blurry and are hard to our eyes to concentrate on (ex : 5:00 or 8:05)
also your voice is so relaxing 🥰
There was an episode of Black Mirror (I forgot which) that had UI I liked so much, I made a note to go back and study it for inspiration for web and app designs! I appreciate media that shows realistic UI that isn’t over-the-top and distracting.
What a cool idea for a video!
A (non-dev, non-designer) coworker approached me a few weeks ago to suggest some UI tweaks to our intternal tools. His suggestions were specific and really good... His inspiration? He had been bingi g Star Trek TNG 😅
I know the UI in older movies (like Alien) was limited by the technology at the time but I've often imagined it to be something akin to the retro aesthetic popular today. Or maybe the reason the screens look so simple is they're displaying simple data in an easy to read format, using the minimum amount of power consumption and CPU cycles. You need that kind of efficiency in long haul space travels.
It's funny that it's actually not the case. Anything moving with that kind of energy budget for human rated interstellar travel should realistically be unconstrained by energy requirements for life support and definitely computation of UI elements on a computer.
Oblivion's aesthetic is incredibly cool, and I thought the UI from that movie as as well. While not being to practical, it was definitely a spectacle.
I'm drunk af and your videos are so fuckin good. Always straight to the point.
The anime "Evangelion" was so influential, the UI designs are used in some of the public places and ARE used during disaster alerts like earthquakes.
I think UI in MR.Peabody & Shermon was really interesting. The holographics in the time machine are tactile, they are like part force field. There are all these floating windows that you can grab and use like an actual tablet. Along with floating keyboard that types like a real keyboard. Most satisfying part with the UI is when Sherman needs to override an error and he slides his finger on one of the windows to reveal the override button which is like an actual button. Its a really neat concept of a digital UI that has very tactile things you can interact with
As a Graphic & Motion Designer, always looking the interfases in movies and series, i think that Minority Report not only opened a new path, but explained no linear edit with data ingestion in an ultra modern and stylized way for "The Masses". Was one of the most "No bullshit added elements" of that time.
There’s a phenomenal episode of the podcast “99% Invisible” that covers this topic and it’s great. If anyone wants more of this, the episode is called “future screens are mostly blue”
I feel like the style of sci-fi UI the real world is likely to lean towards in the coming decades will probably be something like the ones in children of men (2006) - understated, rather than flashy or in-your-face. Sure, the cars have HUDs, but they're for simple things like the speedometer and navigation, clean light sans serif, and they're tucked away in the corner of the windshield so you can still see the road unobstructed. I don't think the real world ever lands on the most outlandish designs predicted by past sci fi - tech innovation tends to stick to pretty middle-of-the-road aesthetics. But hey, most of the time the art direction isn't there to predict, it's there to set a tone. You could never say the fifth element wasn't realistic enough - if it was a believably realistic future, it wouldn't be the fifth element!
I enjoy your videos very much. This channel is my new favourite.
You are a genius!!! Where have your videos been? Love it!! Still waiting for MS Clippy to become the AI companion all around. 😂
Did I miss it, or did you completely ignore Last Starfighter which had the equivalent of apple phones and iPads that functioned exactly as the real devices do (years before they existed)?
As the junction of being a huge sci-fi nerd, a programmer, and GNU/Linux user, I wanted to bringe al together, and taking advantage that Linux UI programs are the bee's knees in terms of customization, I'm developing a UI theme that bring that "glowing blue screens" aesthetic onto a usable everyday computing experience.
It is not a simple task, as I need to keep that feel of the "cyberworld" while removing all that clutter those UI put in place just to make it seem complicated and technical.
In the end I want people to be able that they are using Iron Man's computer or something while being a comfortable experience that does not give you a headache.
If you willing to learn one of Linux distro, you can recreate those "futuristic" UI with sway, tmux, cmatrix, and much more.. creativity is the limit
@juxtopposed i'm doing a research on this topic, if possible, can i please get the links or the resources that you have used to get the images and the content here? especially for the history? would be very helpful.
Ur a graphic designer, not someone who just uses UIs as yet another tool. Not everyone has the energy nor the time to not let stuff clutter and mush.
i like the idea of normalizing custom, tailor-made UI, but i hate the idea of (whatever kind of) "AI" doing it. i think, *algorithmic* guides for customizing one's UI (like making sure the text contrast ratio is high enough, and applying changes to related areas) would make more sense for something like this anyway
but then, i'm also highkey allergic to the term "AI". especially right now, now that the term is used _everywhere_ for marketing, i just want it to go away
good point
@@backup_hddDon't think of the fake marketing AI, ex.: "this washing machine uses AI to wash your clothes!" (yeah, right 🙄), think of a proper AI, that is a personal UI designer that can create a good looking UI to your specifications (style, needs, etc.). So like ricing, but you can do it in a few minutes and not week/months.
if someone wonders what the app is on the 10:17 it is an obsidian with custom theme
80 years earlier, who would've thought people will have jobs to center divs
so in the movie Her, everyone customizes their UI... basically, they are using Arch linux
Cool videos!
Aww the 1968 "Mother Of All Demos" and its impact on sci-fi didn't make the cut.
Great video. I've been thinking about how to make an intemporal UI for a long time. It's not something a lot of people are talking about sadly.
If you look back at all these UIs, the only ones that haven't aged are those using flat colours. It's a concept that has been technologically possible since the very onset of computers and is still relevant today. All those which use advanced effects like reliefs, borders, glows, blurs, opacity, ... come in and out as trends change but if you look at a flat colour UI from the 90s it will look as modern as if it had been made today. The only thing that betrays it would be the antialiasing on text that was pretty bad back then.
It's the only thing I've been able to deduce. With regards to interfacing I can't picture what the future will look like. It will have to be reliable and convenient so no big BCI helmets or finicky gesture recognition like what exists today. We do see custom keypads with custom keys to automate some workflows in the gaming and AV community that look very much like the Alien ones.
Personally my preferred interfacing tech is a mix of touchscreens, keys, and minimal gestures (not like minority report, more like small taps and swipes without having to move the wrist and arm). But that's not very futuristic.
Yeah, on my desktop, I use a theme based on a 90's unixlike OS, and it only looks out of place with apps that ignore it and use the very modern overly curved corners trend. Which I find very unpleasant.
8:59 linux user detected
also why tf would we need AI to edit a few lines in a text file there are already a few good gui editors for these things and plenty of themes available my personal favorite place to get system wide themes is Archcraft
Everyone ends up on a tiling manager in the end.
would holographic be eco friendly, carbon negative and has low power consumption ?
You still need tool for that. Like a phone or pc or something else. So carbon negative is almost impossible but low energy consumption can happen. We just need to find something like e ink but quality will probably shitty
Idiocracy's take on UI and man-machine interaction is supreme
for real
The most efficient UI is No UI
I love your videos. I studied, mathematics, computer science and art in uni.I used to hate UI/UX, Frontend for a long time as a backend dev cause I used to suck at it, and never seem to get how the modern world is doing it. But I have gotten very interested and falling in love with it slowly again. Thank you
the UIs in star trek really look like the kind of UIs you see on machinery like Allen Bradley HMIs and stuff. Very controls engineer esque design that You'd see on machinery in plants / factories or manufacturing lines.
awesome editing tho
I never would have put so much thought into something I considered so trivial like UI. But this video totally changed that, I already tried out Figma thanks to this channel, it’s opening me up to a whole new hobby and interest
that's the goal :) glad you enjoyed it
UX/UI designers that literally have to study years and/or get a degree to design UIs: "am I a joke to you?"
Fully expected a "and that's why this video is sponsored by Squarespace" at the end
Interesting that you didn't mention Voice Interaction. Obviously, for Star Trek it's better to have voice, rather than characters using light pens etc. Mr Robot is, of course, contemporary and totally authentic. Not once did I 'groan' - been in the It business since late late 70s.
Star Trek universe computers very much NOT like our computers - see 'multiple PADDs'.
Battlestar Galactica - revised - very mich 'retro' to top the Cylons spying on them. clever.
this video is useless
you show a radar and say it's the first CRT display but the original TV from 1927 is a CRT display. See CRT on Wikipedia. I think maybe you got your terms mixed up? Both old Oscilloscopes and old TVs used CRTs so they're both CRT displays. I've always called Oscilloscopes "vector displays", wikipedia calls them "vector monitors". No idea if that's the correct term but several games used them. You showed Space Wars but also Asteroids, Tailgunner and of course the home console the Vectrex. And there were color vector displays used in games like Tempest, Quantum, and others.
I've always hated the hightech overlapping transparent windows in movies. All the junk behind making it impossible to tell what you're looking at. Also, see-through phones/tables. Why? "You know what would improve our design? What if we lowered the opacity?" Not to mention now everybody can see what you're looking at.
Regardless of when a story is made, it seems like most "futuristic" fictional interfaces tend to use the "neon" look. Basically bright outlines and dark backgrounds. If you think about it old wireframes are neon as well... just with more 3D. The color makes no difference. Making it blue doesn't change what it is.
Then separately you have the screen. Sometimes a fat CRT. Sometimes a flat screen. Sometimes a hologram.
But it seems like the older stories tended to put more focus on the physical stuff AROUND the screens. Buttons knobs and levers. More recent stories tend to forget about all that physical stuff and portray only the screens. If you think about it a "holographic" system is just taking this to its logical extreme. Zero physical elements. Not even a monitor.
I think the future UI will go back to old UI. Many modern UI is downright bad. Windows especially has become horrible with so much useless space and it's not alone there, a lot of UI is pretty inefficient and the focus on dumbing it down results sometimes in the creation of icons that no one understands. I also think games UI had split between really good UI like Dead Space and really bad UI like in a lot of RPGs with big black half-transparent boxes. Sometimes game developers started the same bad trend of TV/Movies with color schemes, so every SciFi game had to have a bluish UI with dumbed down super simple icons. I felt a lot of games started to feel cold and sometimes lack in atmosphere if they weren't able to do something else really good (like the music).
I think a lot of the older UIs are in fact way better and I think you can see that whenever efficiency and usability becomes really important. Suddenly it looks like Windows 98 again or Archers Enterprise.
I figure fictional UIs are never really intended as prediction--they are what they are for narrative reasons. When actual interfaces are inspired by them, they're usually bad ideas. The flip phone was a rare good one (directly inspired by Star Trek).
Elite's UI was probably inspired by Atari's Star Raiders, a game that in many ways was its predecessor. Star Raiders was in turn a hybrid of text-based "Star Trek" games and simple first-person space shooters, and took a lot of visual cues from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica as well.
Stargate with ancient looking visuals? The whole show is around deciphering and reverse engineering ancient technology, starmaps and symbols. :D
Do you aware of that enterprise is a prequel to all star trek serieses? So this is not a "new" UI. It is a predecessor. So it is less advanced on purpose. :D
And about the lot of small screens. I'm a gui developer, a ux designer and I have traded in the past. There are some kind of tasks where you need a lot of information simultaneously in more than 2 monitors. And those windows could have several smaller parts of data. Check a screenshot of a modern IDE tool, webstorm or vs code. Or Photoshop. They are full of small little details panels or palettes.
You are also speaking about the future trend of user customized gui. I think it's is already available. If you are checking a developer's environment.
Star Wars doesn't have keyboards because of speech interfaces, droid to system interfaces, and function as you mentioned. Unless they file written reports, there isn't a need to type. Think from the perspective of a pilot and it will eventually make sense. Also, older industrial equipment had dials and levers and the like, as do cars.
A keyboard is a poor interface. It is just really difficult to communicate without one. Text is boing on screen, so the robots speak, and all orders from command come from a video call. Trade relations are different, but I don't remember a printed sheet before Rogue One. Though, I may have hallucinated it being there.
The movie avoids clutter and things that seem uninteresting, on purpose. It took work to make it that way. Also, no one expected keyboards to become a commodity interface. Keyboards were pretty diverse even a while after 1981.
You can go back further than 1962 for the first video game.
It would either be an unnamed missile game on a "cathode-ray tube amusement device" in the 1940s.
Or, the more likely contender, 1958's Tennis for Two on the same technology.
All the fake UIs with excessive random marks and brackets, numbers, lines, gauges, abbreviations, etc., drive me nuts. Like, who could look at that and actually see what’s going on? There’s so much clutter, the designers seem to not know when to stop adding things.
Scifi movies from 1960s and 1970s were most likely inspired by vacuum tube computers, as vacuum tubes were not individually labelled and they lit up according to the computer activity not unlike the display lights they show in those movies, meanwhile the actual input was done using a printer outputting numbers on a long, narrow piece of paper, another aspect often portrayed in those movies. Ironically scifi movies from the 1950s and earlier with control panels filled with VU meters ended up being more accurate as analog indicators in only started being phased out in the mid 1990s and digital indicators still often emulate analog indicators.
1. I am absolutely sure, blue glow interface scifi design was already a thing before Minority Report
2. The first Jurassic Park and it's 3d interface!! :D
I actually enjoyed this journey through earlier fictional UI a lot. I have a heavy interest in old computers, and have an Apple II, but I never really thought about how those early UI’s and things like GS/OS compared to what was being done in film or sci-fi. I’ve always focused on things like the Amiga in the background of Die Hard, or the Apple III in Tron, that I never paid attention to the fictional stuff. In Very well done editing as well, can tell the design skills transfer a bit. Can’t wait to see more.
I am very annoyed at the prevelance of semi-transparent UIs, be it 3D holograms or just glas pannels - WHY would I want to see what's behind my UI, it's just distracting and makes it harder to ready anything. I mean there's a reason we print books on paper, not plastic foil.
This video doesn't mention user interface of submarine USS Seawolf: most interfaces were touchpads with red/orange monochromatic displays already in 1995.
I wonder if the recent popularity of blue interfaces also has to do with the proliferation of then-hard-to-manufacture blue LEDs, which were expensive and placed into high-end well designed hardware like sound systems, maybe some subtle psychological influence there? I'm also thinking it could be that the blue color helps these interfaces fade in with the background a bit better, as opposed to a variety of colors on different flashing lights.
In 1991, there was a computer game called Rules of Engagement, that simulated space battle missions. It had colorful control screens that looked like they came straight out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The screens were a little cluttered, but worked well. For the sequel in 1993, they had mini panels that could be arranged four on a screen. This might sound good as you could put the most important controls all on one screen. Except that the screen looked even more cluttered, and four panels never seemed to be enough to hold all the panels that you needed, so you were constantly switching them out for others. It was a mess.
I don't know shit about UI design, but I do have some experience with developing industrial systems that include HMIs for the operators. When a do-it-all designers who work mostly with designing interfaces for the general public are tasked with making an interface to control, say, a powerplant, or a very specialized and complex piece of equipment, they tend to produce something that look very clean and uncluttered on the first glance, but causes an immediate stream of complaints from the operators who actually have to use it for 8 hours a day. They absolutely HATE the inefficient use of space with large margins that the modern mainstream design trends seem to favor for "readability". They want to be able to glance across their multiple screens and see every parameter from every sensor without having to do any input like switching pages or scrolling. Once they get used to the interface, it doesn't matter how many elements are there on the same screen or how hard it is to navigate for the average Joe, it's not meant to be used without extensive training anyway. Dedicated views for certain tasks are fine, but even then it's better to put everything related to that task on a single screen, instead of e.g. organizing it as a step-by-step wizard or in multiple tabs.
To answer the pinned question, yes, I very much do, predominantly TNG era Star Trek and the sort is my main cup of tea, but I don't generally diss any. I enjoy the idea of a brighter, more humane future, where we start working together, for everyone's betterment.
Regarding the video itself, YT recommended me this video probably due to that background. It was so well made that I felt the need to check out what else you have in store, and while I was somewhat disappointed when I learned that it generally explores topics I'm less interested in - more of a backend brained person - I also felt the need to point out how entertaining it was, and how I wished there was more content from you that I would be interested. To clarify this is to say that this is some good quality stuff that I appreciate existing even if it is not for me, rather than to say that you should be focusing on different content.
Once again, very well made!
> 100 Years of Fictional UI
> did not mention Neon Genesis Evangelion
I think fictional UI should continue to push the boundaries for what might really be built for things. This is particularly interesting to me in scenarios where humans become more capable and the interfaces are adapted to them. What could those be like?
The style of interface you’ve highlighted I think will continue to differ because who they are for in these stories and games differ. Different personalities and professions work best with different interfaces; be they cluttered, simple, childish, pleasing, etc.
I like the idea of self optimizing interfaces a lot.
I remember back in the day when you could completely replace the windows shell with a custom program… when I was a kid I replaced my windows gui with a real functional LCARS ui
I'm a bit disappointed that Dark Star (1974) didn't get a mention. There's a shot of a UI that looks like it might have inspired LCARS.
Ultimately UI’s in film are storytelling devices first and foremost, and there’s a language to them that differs from the one we use in real life in the same way that nobody really speaks like an actor reading a script does, or hangs up the phone without saying goodbye, etc. Busy, overly complicated UIs are more of a shorthand for “this is the future” while being visually interesting to look at, rather then a earnest attempt at envisioning the future of computing.
Personally I suspect that UI’s in the future will actually become *more* minimalistic than now, not less, as computers become more intelligent. A lot more things will be controlled through voice or predicting what we want, rather then having to click through a web of UI’s to get the information or functions we want.
" imagine controlling a game with your mind "
Fun fact: furries have developed VRChat compatible brain interfaces... for controlling their fucking ears.
I see a world where the UI is extremely minimal. Each element is predicted like auto complete words but the whole UI. So you effectively have everything you need on screen at all times and nothing more. You have to 'look off screen slightly' and the next level of probability for what you want is shown. The more bizarre a thing you want to do the further you have to initially look but then that feature will be right at your fingertips. Eye tracking emotion tracking it has empathy for you so high I knows nearly exactly what you want at all times. Everything becomes one seemless app copy and paste from one app to another dissolves into copying from one place to another. The app and OS merge into an amorphous yet fully structured and understandable blob. Everything all the time everywhere yet only one thing to distract you at a time
5:00 - the timeline seems centred at 1982 and moves towards 1997... only to then start by showing TRON - a movie from (you guessed it) 198.
This is lovely, and maybe someone else suggested it, but the brief brilliance of UIs in Max Headroom (the TV series) is probably worth including here. Or maybe you did and I missed it? Anyway, excellent work and a lovely way to slice time and show us these UIs!
Agreed, I saw Max Headroom as a kid and was amazed! That show was also how I started associating English accents with intelligence and sophistication, thanks to Amanda Pays.
I was about to mention something when no mention was made of the UI in Jurassic Park, but then I remembered the "UNIX system" used the real UI from the Silicon Graphics workstations of the time.
modern websites tend to be geared towards getting people to not skip over ads and read as much as possible while staying on the page (even if it's something you're not interested in) which makes them kind of boring and "clean", since it's about making money
old fashioned sci fi designs are better because of limited resources and making things more stylised. such as in battle beyond the stars where they had a couple of C64 computers on one of the ships consoles
personally I like the orange neon glow style effects you get with the 80's style anime scifi like the bubblegum crisis car scene
unexpected gundam!!1!
(this video is great if i am going forward with making my own UI project that i have in mind, thanks!)
I think the biggest difference in cinema vs real world UI is clearly a practical consideration for the sake of the audience, that's using lots of text instead of symbols and icons. If you look at any professional GUI application from the last couple of decades, or even something like a modern airplane glass cockpit, you won't notice a massive amount of descriptive text on screen, unless it's for something complex. Where text is used for a control or indicator it's generally a short abbreviation. Of course in universe, and in the real world, the person using this UI is trained in what all those symbols and abbreviations mean, but the cinema audience generally isn't, so full desciptive text makes the user's actions more obvious.
Currently my favorite UI is Star Citizen's. It falls prey to the blue glowing sci fi trope, but it's remarkably simple, easy to navigate, and fits into the immersion of the world pretty welll