There is a fine line between using things like color as a tool to shape a product, versus using them as an option to sell a product. I know which side Jobs was on.
Albert Hofmann (legendary chemist who synthesized LSD) and Shigeru Miyamoto (godfather of Nintendo who created Mario), both cite walking around and playing in the woods freely and unsupervised as a child being transformative experiences which (they believe) led to their later life accomplishments.
I naturally see the visual language as an output and the interaction language as an input, both interfacing with the holistic design space that I am trying to explore across the design process. They are not two discrete activities, but two forms of participation in a singular activity, with a design of the thing as a single output. I have taken this approach to designing things for a long time now, with no great peril beyond philosophical curiosities such as this.
I consider visual design to be a part of interaction design, and taking one without the other is a failure to understand design (to the limited extent it can be understood at all). An example: a traffic light's visual design is fundamental to its interaction design.
Software is made of a set of symbols unique to its particular function, and user interaction at its most primitive is no more than the relationship of those symbols to the ones present in the mind of the user.
The latest fads in user interaction design seem to ignore this perspective, and instead treat "UI" as another abstraction layer of unique symbols on top of software, then expecting all software to be designed top-down based off this "unified design language". This approach unfortunately ignores the user, providing further indirection away from the underlying software and it's function, herding the user into a church of the designer's own construction where they are now forced to worship interaction in the abstract as a prerequisite to using the software (or at least blindly perform whatever rituals it demands).
The aim of design unification is often a false path, born out of convenience for the designer, and it's pursuit shows a certain level of disrespect to both the user and other designers. Programming languages - arguably interaction design in its purest form - are a more interesting path towards better software (see Smalltalk, Swift playgrounds, and the work at VPRI).
Material is not what software is made of, but it is a pretty good sign of what marketing is made of these days.
An unsettling feeling that Home Automation™ is not actually about making the home and its consumer electronics more integrated, easier to use, and providing more free time and control to the individual. Rather, it is about making things harder to use for the average consumer without machine or professional assistance, requiring more hardware bundles and software services to get the "total experience", and control and data slowly taken away from the individual. Of course, this play for command and control is for the innocent sake of predictable behavior that can be optimized (and the steady revenue and growth that implies).
Self optimizing systems' predilection to predictability is quite predictable (whether machine or human).
While I believe Nest and HomeKit will likely be successful due to these optimizations they can potentially bring, I consciously will take the less optimal route this time, and have fun DIY'ing my automation instead.
Haven't read the book yet (as I just heard of it from the post), but sounds interesting. I am also currently working on a piece of fiction with some similar themes, and was wondering if you could share some thoughts on how you manage references to real world entities and technologies in the story? What sort of balance did you find between history, science, and fiction?
The author and the technology/finance circle jerk he feeds off are most definitely conspiring to put the reader in their bubble. The only thing bubble based software is eating is available capital, which could be used to research and develop more robust, long term solutions by advancing hardware and software together.
The article only mentioned kidney disease, low potassium dietary restrictions, that the factory vegetable industry is going to grow, and that kids like factory lettuce better. No other details on motivations for getting into the factory vegetable business. The article makes it seem like the reason was just because they had the clean room facilities and they could - so why not?
I can vaguely imagine a more advanced numeral system based on geometric visualizations in 2 or 3 dimensions (rather than the existing 1-dimensional digit string), that is also more suited to probabilistic representations than fractions or decimals.
Relational reasoning is a key use case to be considered for any popular numeral system (How many do I have? How do I signal that amount to others? Do I have more or less?). For small, whole quantities (<100), alternate numeral systems could likely reach a similar learning curve as Arabic numerals. Very large and complex quantities, and things of a number theoretic nature are probably areas where a future numeral system will be differentiated.
One of the concepts I have been thinking about for an education system is based on this triad:
- Symbol (mathematical languages / abstract interfaces)
- Human (natural languages / human-human interfaces)
- Machine (programming languages / human-computer interfaces)
Any particular subject or area of study is taught and learned using all 3 approaches taken together. Used as a foundational educational framework, this system could have potential to help cross discipline study through the assimilation of fundamental aspects of computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, and math into other fields. This also allows people to skip learning these topics as unpleasant prerequisites, which may not be well integrated with their field's particular goals.
Existing universities and schools will not be able to transition to these sorts of new holistic systems. Entirely new systems based on modern first principles must be created for the future of education.
"Look at little Johnny concentrate on his iPad. You know those great new user interfaces... easy enough for a baby! He has been so well behaved lately, maybe we can buy him some Candy Quest Coins as a treat? Oh, and don't forget his pills at noon."
D.A.R.E. - To keep kids OFF the streets (where they could engage in dangerous activities such as "play"), and to keep them ON drugs (where they are easy money).
Going along with your plausible speculation, and assuming XPC is used to communicate with the WebGL view (using UIRemoteView maybe), hopefully that means opening up the XPCKit framework as well in iOS 8.
The command line is a textual interface, and both code and data can be represented as text at a low level. It would seem that this is a good thing for efficiency and usability, as it minimizes context switching between interface paradigms, and offers direct access to a low level representation of the system using a high bandwidth input device (a keyboard).
I still think textual interfaces are a great thing for those reasons, but I don't believe they are the best thing in many cases. Yes, they are very capable and customizable, but have serious weaknesses with usability, especially when working with data of higher dimension.
I don't really think of it as text versus graphics, but rather an issue of data being represented in its best form for doing some particular work with it, and having the best interfaces to those different forms and the work. The traditional one-domain/one-application GUI model is unsustainable for this purpose, and has the weakness of constant context shifting. Composable visual interfaces are an anti-application paradigm, and more focused on data flow. To avoid problems with pure visual programming environments, symbols would still be considered the best representation for certain work (like editing text and working with logic).
After years of living on the command line, OS X specifically, and learning its quirks and tricks, I am actually ready to move on.
Right now I am more interested in creating simple visual interfaces on top of UNIX-y tools, for my own personal use cases. The main benefit of this is the ability to better experiment with and optimize my workflows for different properties as needed through different combinations of single responsibility interfaces and single responsibility programs.
I am sensing that there is great promise in seeing much higher APMs (actions per minute) for many tasks, even compared to the all-powerful command line. Also, there are lots of interesting possibilities for better visual representations of data to improve comprehension and usability.
Cameras seem like a good idea, but training won't change anything.
Good engagement with citizens? The power is the draw to the position, not the responsibility that comes with it. Take away the power from the job, and see how many superheroes exist in the world.