I still think that king of all User Interface films is Wim Wenders' masterpiece, "Until The End Of The World" (1991).
One of the interfaces in UTEOTW is mentioned in Shedroff's and Noessel's talk (Bounty Bear), but the film is packed with a wide range of very clever and different kinds of user interfaces for a variety of computers, gadgets, and equipment. Near the beginning there's an in-car navigation system that's personalizable. Then, the detective "Winter" has bounty hunter interfaces that feature a very interesting Super Mario-like character/agent, that reflects searching activity. Lots of great animation and near-Google Earth-like behavior. Then there's the famous "Bounty Bear" application that the Russian Bounty Hunter demonstrates (on a computer that uses advanced "Vietnamese chips"), wherein a 3D animated Bear, dressed as Stalin, reflects search activity by wandering around in a 3D environment, opening doors, looking in manholes (all the while exclaiming, "I'm looking... I'm looking, Be patient...") until the query is found and presented onscreen. There are also many handheld computers, videophones (which capture video much like camphones today, though in the movie it's referred to as "videofaxing" - indicating that there's a network, but that the Internet is not itself mentioned). Set in what at the time was the future, 1999 - 2000, the film made a very serious attempt to create a range of believable interfaces. And here's where I think that this film is instructive to our field. The types of interfaces that the film portrayed were, I believe, achievable. What the film failed to anticipate, was the bland, grey-concrete-wall of Microsoft-type Windows applications descending like a dull thud on our entire software industry. The film anticipated something that was possible, but did not come to pass - namely an intersection of the much more engaging Game Industry (and the quality of "delight") with normal enterprise and functional software. So instead of novel and creative interfaces, the 1990s was cheated by a tsunami of boring enterprise-software-like field-filled forms and software experiences drained of all possible joy and supportive visualization/animation. It was an incredible failure of imagination, a disease of risk-aversion, and sad testament to the low power of UX professionals in the non-game areas of software. Today we may have another chance (albeit nearly two decades later) to rethink software of many types, and begin to bring more creativity, novelty, and visual reinforcement to our work. It's unfortunate that this film (which in the theatrical release was 3 hours long, and the Director's Cut is much longer) is not available in a U.S./English Language regional DVD. It can still be found on VHS, or on German and Italian DVDs (in PAL /European Region versions). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34500 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
