Designing the Computer UIs In Movies 371
xandroid points out an NPR interview with Mark Coleran, who
"...designs the fancy-but-fake graphics that flash across computers in the movies. He has worked on a laundry list of blockbusters: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Ultimatum, Children of Men, Mission Impossible III, and many more. He says a lot of the inspiration for computer screens comes from video games." The main point of these fake movie UIs is different than that of real UIs: to tell a story very quickly, not to reveal and enable function.
Story? (Score:3, Interesting)
The main point of these fake movie UIs is different than that of real UIs: to tell a story very quickly, not to reveal and enable function.
And what story is that? That computers in the future are shiny and pretty if not outright magical?
Matrix averted this trope (Score:5, Interesting)
The Viewer Friendly Interface [tvtropes.org] trope was (surprisingly) largely averted in the Matrix where only a little Hollywood was wrapped around an almost unmodified nmap and sshnuke [nmap.org].
Re:Not to blame (Score:5, Interesting)
Just keep him away from any real UI! (Score:5, Interesting)
This for the ones who think Movie-OS interfaces are cool and slick looking: They're not efficient, they're not sensible, they are not intuitive and most of all, they're not useable.
I often run into people who ask me "Why isn't this or that program designed like that one in this or that movie". Because it would not be usable. A few examples how Movie-OS interfaces are very, very poorly designed, from a usability point of view.
1) They're slow. Cue CSI fingerprint patching program. The program displays every single failed compare in quick flash forward display. Pulling the whole dataset from the database and rendering it takes time. This time is wasted. You would not want your program to do that.
2) Hard to reach buttons. Unfortunately, Knight Rider is the only example that comes to my mind right now, but it's true for far too many movies. Buttons located overhead, out of reach, sometimes requiring the user/pilot to stop doing whatever he is doing right now, move his hands and punch a minuscle button somewhere awkward. Yes, it looks cool, but it's about as sensible as putting the gear stick behind the driver's seat.
3) 100" see through displays. Again CSI (but it's made its way into various other movies by now). Yes, we all want bigger displays. Bigger is better. But there's a limit to better. Especially if, as in CSI, the additional space is not used to present more information but just to display the information in larger font or to fill it with more pointless gimmicky pictures. The angle your eye can see sharp in and can easily catch is very tiny. The diameter of the screen has to be viewable by moving your eyes alone and without strain, or it can just as well be accessible by scrolling.
4) Lifted-hands interface. Lacking a better term I dubbed it that: An interface that does not allow your hand to rest but requires you to lift them and reach. First of all, it's inaccurate. You are moving your hand from your shoulder instead of your wrist, which does limit your accuracy quite a bit. It's straining and tiring. Especially when you're supposed to hit tiny icons, this is magnitudes worse than traditional input.
5) Touch input. While we're at it. Touch input becomes so popular in cellphones that EVERYTHING has to be touch input now. In case you didn't notice: It's popular because you have the input device in your palm. Now put it upright like a computer screen and tell me how convenient, comfortable or accurate it is. Not to mention that you're covering the info you try to access with your fingers, which means that you will have to lift your hand to see what you're doing. It's comfortable for quick input, but not for constant use.
Basically, Movie-OS interfaces look cool and dramatic, and that's what they're good for. They are not good for use.
80's version of this was lacking (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember being slightly irked by computer scenes in 80's movies: while showing a person typing command line text, the displayed text was revealed at a constant rate, probably about that of a 150 baud modem. The appearance is vastly different than that of someone actually typing.
Same with early attempts at showing GUI use - constant, linear movements of the cursor.
I suspect that the problem came from lack of the computer / tech equivalent of a 'sound guy'. No way would a sound engineer allow an otherwise well-made movie to be released with out of sync, or unnatural spoken word.
Re:LCARS (Score:3, Interesting)
The newfangled action UI's like the ones in TFA look like toy packaging. [screenrant.com]
Movie OS @ userfriendly.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Read the Movie OS arc at userfriendly.org, starting here: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010111 [userfriendly.org]
Re:Just keep him away from any real UI! (Score:3, Interesting)
"5) Touch input. While we're at it. Touch input becomes so popular in cellphones that EVERYTHING has to be touch input now. In case you didn't notice: It's popular because you have the input device in your palm. Now put it upright like a computer screen and tell me how convenient, comfortable or accurate it is. Not to mention that you're covering the info you try to access with your fingers, which means that you will have to lift your hand to see what you're doing. It's comfortable for quick input, but not for constant use."
You make a good point with most of it, but this one is wrong. When I bought my tablet, I didn't expect to use the touchscreen in laptop-form at all. Instead, what I find now is that I have a tendency to try to push 'Okay' buttons and close windows on normal LCDs by touching the screen. Obviously I've found it to be a lot easier and more intuitive to touch it than use the mouse, despite have worked with mice for so many years. I can hear you saying 'Okay, I said "for quick input". The thing is, interfaces have to be designed for how they get their input. Most of ours are designed with kb/mouse input in mind, but they could easily be designed with touch-input in mind and avoid the idiotic 'fingers are blocking data' problems.
We've a long way to go, but that's the direction we're headed.
An example of realistic UI (Score:4, Interesting)
The movie Antitrust was pretty realistic and accurate. The computer interface that was shown was Gnome. Even the lines of code that were displayed had been borrowed from Open source projects. Maybe that is because the producers listen to professional consultant (among which there was de Icaza). I am sure there are other examples of good UI, but indeed they are a minority.
Re:Not to blame (Score:2, Interesting)
Guilty or not, he's on on my hit-list, right below the pope.
Smoke a spliff, maybe throw some Bob Marley on the stereo and chill out, man.
Re:"Narrative Causality"... (Score:3, Interesting)
everything that matters exists and acts because it serves the plot.
Everything that matters, right.
So what would be the problem with showing an actual ssh "access denied" or "someone is doing something nasty" message? Or with using real security-related tools like netcat and iptables? I mean, sure, most of the screen is going to be irrelevant, but I'm sure the actors are going to be able to tell you what's going on, and it's still throwing in a bunch of "red herrings" or "generic extras" in the UI, still everything that matters serves the plot.
Matrix, SSH, nmap, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well I rather see some fancy things in movies. Movies generally never show exact true life anyway in any area. Why should they in computer.
Personally I liked how the character of Trinity used nmap to find a host with a vulnerable version of SSH (along with the SSHv1 CRC32 vulnerability). Nmap has actually been in a few movies:
http://nmap.org/movies.html
APPLE ][ (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite a number of movies and TV shows use Apple ][ assembler dumps for various computer-related activities; I imagine the intent in those cases is to present something which looks both cryptic and meaningful.
Re:Matrix, SSH, nmap, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
We all like to be part of an exclusive club. I thought it was great that Trinity used something I knew a little about and that most of the audience probably didn't. It made me feel like the movie was speaking to me personally (well, it was about the only thing in the movie that did; I recall walking out of that one). Neal Stephenson does the same thing all the time, and it's fun.
I wonder if the way to make a movie appeal to a wide audience is to insert in-jokes and such for as many different demographics as possible. They don't have to be big, but I suspect it's better to make references that are lost on 95% of the audience and make the other 5% feel special than to blandify the movie, at least if you can keep the other 95% unaware that they missed something. Do that 20 times and you could make everyone feel special, singled out for a wink, valued.
Or would it get old too fast?
Re:Matrix, SSH, nmap, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
That was very much allright with me, showing The Real Thing [TM] while still looking slick.
Re:Clever girl (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the reasons I like gentoo is that watching the compiler messages scroll up the screen makes it feel like a movie computer. They always have a window with messages scrolling quickly by. The true fancy computer interfaces reduce clutter and can look rather boring on (movie) screen.
Re:Story? (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be much funnier if they showed the hacker trying to wait for that stick to properly unmount on a Windows system so as to not corrupt any of that data by just jerking it out, because that is what _really_ takes ages, nowadays.
Re:Clever girl (Score:5, Interesting)
I just re-watched all three Bourne movies recently. What I love in movie/TV UIs is that they're apparently still stuck in the command line era. Nearly every episode of ALIAS, James Bond movies, etc. etc. people are slamming away at the keyboard like they're cybering with a rock-hard pants tent, but when's the last time you can remember someone using a mouse?