The Experience Stack
Image from Don Norman’s press kit
While we’re on the topic of new user interfaces, this is Don Norman, author of the book The Design of Everyday Things. He’s a cognitive scientist working in product design.
Norman wrote a couple of articles recently, identifying command lines interfaces and physicality as important directions in the future of user interfaces.
Command lines: he means search engines, and refers to the control language as “more ad-hoc than systematic”. But it sounds like conversation and implicature are super important.
And physicality: that means we need to understand how we approach and understand physical objects, and what the appropriate interactions are with tangible interfaces, like the Nintendo Wii.
He has this to say about the Wii, incidentally:
“With the Wii, the action depends upon the situation. To release a bowling ball, for example, one releases the button push. It makes sense when I write it, but I suspect the bowling-game designers discovered this through trial and error, plus a flash of insight.”
He’s probably right. You’d be unlikely to figure out that action without holding one of these Wiimotes in your hand.
How the product appears in its physical context is what interests me most because it talks most to experience. To get into it a little more, I want to talk briefly about a project I’m working on this quarter.