Learning from Terminals to Design the Future of User Interfaces
Hmm. There is a (minor) flaw in your argument.<p>But before I get to that, there are a <i>few</i> places where non-developers have user interfaces that reward expertise. One prominent example are Bloomberg terminals: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics8.nytimes.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;business&#x2F;sub-jp-bloomberg&#x2F;sub-jp-bloomberg-superJumbo.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics8.nytimes.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;business&#x2F;sub-...</a><p>Notice that the interface (which is extremely customizable, feel free to look up other images, each will be rather different) is more-or-less a tiling window manager with terminals in each window that have rich media, nice fonts, non-ASCII UI elements (albeit ones that seem somewhat stuck in the &#x27;90s), etc. Quite bit to learn from there.<p>So here is the flaw: I am afraid the reason <i>most</i> interfaces that non-technologists have to use cater to intuition and a pleasant appearance rather than rewarding expertise is all to simple: <i>No one wants to spend any time becoming an expert at using a gajillion specialized, but infrequently used, software interfaces</i>, each of which would, according to your ideal, be optimally designed to allow an expert to perform the associated task efficiently and well.<p>The average person pays off their credit card once a month, and pays their taxes once a year. The incentive for them to learn to do these things more efficiently isn&#x27;t very compelling, and the number of people who have 20 active credit cards for whom it <i>would</i> be compelling isn&#x27;t large enough to be worth creating an expert UI for (that <i>may</i> change as another couple of billion people get online, if software markets don&#x27;t fragment further)<p>Now, all that said, there is certainly a <i>lot</i> of room for improvement in web-based user interfaces: animations can be faster and more subtle, the use of whitespace can be reduced, typography can be more restrained, decoration and color can be used only when it conveys information (basically, everything Tufte has been telling us for a couple of decades).<p>Windows&#x27; Metro and Modern, and Google&#x27;s Material, are both nice steps in that direction (with the exception of animation), and each represents a <i>lot</i> of difficult design work by large design and development teams. Less certainly <i>is</i> more, both in the sense of the return it offers but also in the investment required. The simpler and less cluttered a user interface is, the more you have to sweat the tiniest of details. This post on redesigning bits of the Chrome browser&#x27;s, uh, <i>chrome</i> is a good case in point: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;google-design&#x2F;redesigning-chrome-desktop-769aeb5ab987" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;google-design&#x2F;redesigning-chrome-desktop-...</a><p>You can expect user interface redesign churn to slow down only once display resolutions stop climbing (because they have exceeded what can be distinguished by the human eye) and form factors stop changing (because the only remaining meaningful constraints are ergonomic).