Are Your GUI 'Telling' Skills Stunted

I have only picked one tiny part of Bret Victor's fantastic paper on Information Software & the Graphical Interface to illustrate the challenges but as you will see from the contents page extract below Bret sets us some real challenges to 'perceived' wisdom and I think provides a glimpse into a future we should be running towards.  For the full paper click here...

Because the child’s “telling” skills are underdeveloped, he communicates complex concepts throughshowing. Similarly, a GUI’s stunted grammar makes telling tedious, but software’s dynamic display is ideal for showing. A user can specify context by pointing somewhere on an information graphic and saying, “There!”

What is software?

• Of software and sorcery. Is “interaction design” the cure for frustrating software, or the disease itself?
• What is software design? Software is not a new and mysterious medium, but a fusion of two old ones.
• What is software for? People turn to software to learn, to create, and to communicate.
• Manipulation software design is hard. Creating software for creating is tricky business.
• Most software is information software. People spend more time learning than creating.

Graphic design

• Information software design is graphic design. People learn by looking. Looks are all that matters.
• Demonstration: Showing the data. Redesigning Amazon as an information graphic.
• Demonstration: Arranging the data. Redesigning Yahoo! Movies as an information graphic.

Context-sensitivity

• Context-sensitive information graphics. Software trumps print by showing only what’s relevant.
• Inferring context from the environment. The outside world can suggest what’s relevant.
• Inferring context from history. Memories of the past can suggest what’s relevant.

Interactivity

• Interactivity considered harmful. The user can suggest what’s relevant, but only as a last resort.
• Reducing interaction. Approaches to easing the pain.
• How did we get here? The popular focus on interactivity is a vestige of another era.

Intermission

• Case study: Train schedules. Designing a trip planner as an information graphic.
• Demonstration: Trip planning redux. Redesigning Southwest Airlines as an information graphic.

Changing the world

• Designing the information software revolution. Five steps from artifice to art form.
• Designing a design tool. Dynamic graphics without the programming.
• Engineering inference from history. How software can learn from the past.
• Engineering inference from the environment. A platform for implicit communication between software.
• Information and the world of tomorrow. Why all this matters.