Apologetic Interfaces

The MacOS X menu for Bose's SoundTouch music system comes across as almost a little heartbreaking. It is as if it doesn't really believe in itself. Why else would 'Quit' be the first menu option? 

The first steps toward a new breed of "Apologetic Interfaces?"

Picture the creative meeting where this was decided. A few people around a conference table, half-empty coffee cups, a few post-it notes. "Let's see, what would The User want to do..." Silence. After a while, from the other side of the table, "Well... it would be... ehhh.. some users might... like to... ehm...shut down the, ehm, quit." "Ah, excellent! Let's write that down on the whiteboard!" "Anything else?"

This example aside, maybe it's not such a bad thing that applications step it down a little. While it's natural that an application wants to tell the user as soon as possible that, "Hey! Guess what, there's a new version of me out!", the problem is that with all the apps you have on your computer, it's just too much distractive shouting going on all the time from a lot of different places.

If I open up Word, I do so because I either want to write something down or read a document. Unless there's a minor crisis (let's say an earthquake) I DO NOT want Office Update to take focus away from the document that's forming in my head and inform me of "critical update #1.6.28343".

Similarly, if I open up say VLC, especially while giving a talk, I do so because I want to show my audience a lovely little video clip, not give them the breaking news that version 2.1.5 has improved the reliability of MKV and MAD file playback.

An old-school, Unapologetic Interface, but not without finesse

Mindlessly checking for an update the first thing you do when the user opens up the application is just bad, thoughtless design. You open an application because you want to do something with it, right now. There are so many more ways in which an update could be done in a nicer, more humane way that doesn't get in the way of the user's intent.

A simple solution would be to gather the information and download the update in the background. Then just hold off the notification until the user either decides to quit the application or becomes idle. Or update it automatically in the background. Or, let the OS handle it if that's an option. Apple knew about this problem as well, that's why they implemented the App Store and the Notification Center. That's all pretty great, but then again some of the most notorious apps aren't using that. Looking at you, Microsoft and Adobe. 

One of the finesse-less, usual suspects

If you look closely at the picture above, you'll see that VLC comes with a solution to this which isn't without finesse. Clicking that small (and offset) check-box, you can chose to automatically download and install updates in the future (given that you then click 'Install Update'). That's actually a pretty elegant design idea. 

Yet, there are two problems with this approach. First, I doubt a lot of people actually notice this potential. With this kind of interface, you get drawn to the "install update" button. Or, if you're in fact giving a presentation, you just click whatever button you can as fast as possible to get this annoying window out of sight. A more general concern with automatic updates, second, is that new isn't always better. If an app goes from say version 1.4.23 to 2.0, it may actually be wise to stick with the old version for a while and let them figure out the bugs before you update. Or you simply don't like the new look and feel. Or, which is getting increasingly common, version 2.0 really means the same functionality as version 1 but now with ads all over the place. 

So when it comes to software updates, I'm leaning more and more towards update-as-you-quit as the more humane approach, with minor, bug fix updates automatically installed in the background. 

In light of this, maybe SoundTouch's approach could be seen as the humble beginnings of an entirely new breed of interfaces, "apologetic interfaces", characterized by low self esteem and by being aware of their propensity to annoy.

"I'm so sorry for wasting your precious time and valuable screen real estate, Dear User, but before we part I would like to let you know that there is a new me for you. No pressure, just letting you know." 

Come to think of it, too much of that could become annoying as well.

The Fishtank: An Agitational Artifact

For our client ABB Corporate Research, we created a series of alternative designs to contrast the traditional user interface and interaction design of control systems for industrial application. The Fishtank was one of the incarnations of this series. It is an interactive design exploration in the area of industrial control systems.

Conventional industrial control systems, such as ABB’s system 800xA, present the user with a panel view where machines, faceplates, sensor data, labels, etc. are organized and visualized side by side in a two-dimensional space. This design idea echoes the way in which control panels have always been designed; evolving from a non-digital era when each button, lever, label, and output device was physical and thus needed physical real-estate and a fixed location on the panel. Over the years, “the panel” as a way of framing and thinking about control room systems has formed a very strong conceptual idea for control room systems.

This is true to this day, when—at least in theory—a digitalized, computer-based control system could have any kind of user interface. Obviously, the 2D panel has not stayed on because it is a bad idea—on the contrary, there are many benefits to separating different things in two dimensions and giving them a fixed physical location in space. 

However, in this project, we wanted to explore the design space of "the possible" in this area by creating a series of radically different designs. The purpose was not necessarily that the results would aim to replace the traditional control room panel, but rather that they in different ways could come to complement, be different from, and to some extent challenge the panel as a design idea.

A typical problem in modern control rooms is the ever-expanding number of sensors that call for the operators’ attention. Relying on the quasi-physical panel as a design idea, it means that a 2D view of a factory keeps getting larger and larger. To deal with this, you either add more screens to the control room or you let the operators only see a small part of the entire factory on their personal screens.

As an alternative to this, we asked: would it be possible to design an interface in which the panel for the entire factory could fit on only one screen? 

The result from this experiment is the Fishtank prototype. It is an example of what we call an “agitational artifact”, i.e. an interactive artifact ideated, designed, and prototyped to be used using real data in real time—but where the main purpose of the artifact is to allow people to be exposed to a hands-on alternative to what they are used to; something with enough of a critical edge to shake them up a little bit, to make them think.

The Fishtank presents the user with a three-dimensional space. In this 3D space, the entire factory resides in the form of all its faceplates. A faceplate can for instance be a representation of a water tank in the form of the name and ID of the tank and its corresponding sensor data, such as water level, temperature of the water, etc.

The three dimensions in the Fishtank, i.e. X, Y, and Z space, are conceptual dimensions that can be controlled by the user. Hence, the user can decide what each of the three dimensions should represent.

For instance, the Y dimension can be made to represent the number of alarms a particular faceplate has; the X axis can be made to represent time since the last alarm; and the Z axis how far from the ideal or threshold each faceplate’s main value is.

But these conceptual dimensions can be changed easily and in real time to allow the user to interact with and play around with the factory to just monitor or to make certain parts stand out.

Unlike a traditional 2D design, the Fishtank uses movement, interaction, and conceptual dimensions—not fixed location in physical space—as the main sense making vehicle for the user. As such, it is radically different from the way in which control room software such as ABB’s 800xA has evolved and provides the user with a very different, engaging, and fun user experience. 

While an interactive artifact should be experienced hands-on, the video below gives you an idea what using this system is like.

Work Music: the Case of the Ramada Inn

Ramada Inn by Neil Young is an epic song to carry out work to -- or, as I'm sure my English teacher once would have had me have it, "an epic song to which to carry out work". Even the folks at the Rolling Stone magazine seem to like it, it's at no. 5 on their list of the best songs of 2012.  

In my experience, different kinds of music tends to be good to do different things to, and then obviously some people like classical music, some like jazz, some techno, while others, for no obvious reason, are into Bieber, Cyrus, Timberlake and the likes of them. Yet, regardless of what you like, this song is just a little different for our specific purpose. Let me explain why:

First, it's an old-school, great, great Neil Young song with his signature high-gain open chords and 5-notes-or-so solos. What more do you need?

Second, it's almost 17 minutes long. This is key. This means you can shut down your email, put it on, dive right into almost any task, and often finish it before the song ends. It's like a mini-sprint for yourself. I'm trying to squeeze in at least one such session a day. Among other thing, this actually got me redesigning my homepage, finally. Let's just say that last time I managed that we didn't have iPhones.

 "Every morning comes the sun."