Ask HN: Why don't sci-fi interfaces ever turn into real products?

2 pointskrschacht2mo ago5 comments

Is there a good reason why the UI we see in sci-fi don't make it into actual products?

Maybe there is some true limitation inherent in this style UI which causes them to stay as mere experiments / novelty?

I'm thinking about demos like this which I've seen go by HN over the years (I'm not involved in any of these):

LCARS demo: https://www.mewho.com/ritos/

Tron-like terminal: https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-ui

Sci-fi UI components: https://github.com/arwes/arwes

And I've long been a fan of designers like gmunk doing UI work for film: https://gmunk.com/Oblivion-GFX

But I'm genuinely confused why the actual UIs we all use on a daily basis are all so derivative of one another when the space of UI possibilities is so vast.

5 comments

JohnFen2mo ago

> Is there a good reason why the UI we see in sci-fi don't make it into actual products?

Most of the UIs I see in science fiction are intended to look good on the screen, not so much for actual real-world usability.

krschachtOP2mo ago

My assumption is a bit different: the UIs in science fiction are intended to communicate information, now typically that's to advance the storyline but there's a lot of overlap with real apps. Maybe more importantly, UIs in movies are elicit a feeling. Maybe it's a shallow feeling of "this is cool!" but to me that's where it seems like production apps mostly give up. "It works, let's move on..." seems to be the bar in most cases rather than "let's wow users!"

This might be a clearer articulation of what I'm trying to get at with my question...

JohnFen2mo ago

> rather than "let's wow users!"

Over the years, I've seen a lot of attempts to make UIs "wow users", and each time the result has been very problematic. Movie UIs are meant, as you say, to communicate things that movies needs communicated. Those things are unrelated to what people using software for real need communicated.

theamk2mo ago

Because they are terrible if you actually try to use them, instead of just seeing them in the movies? In particular,

(1) Human eyes are drawn to moving objects, so unimportant things should not move. That rotating globe with points, or blinking "everything is OK", or jumping arrows would get very old very fast.

(2) Interface should feel fast - not like this LCARS thing where each click takes a few seconds of highly annoying flashing before anything changes. Sure, it makes sense in the movie so that viewers know what the character did, but in real life people know where they clicked.

(3) (Professional) interfaces should be informative. If one needs to click ten times to browse the list of twenty people, and each click takes multiple seconds, that's a lot of wasted time. That said, if something is designed for novice/occasional users, lower information density is OK and in fact, that's what we see in all many modern mobile apps.

krschachtOP2mo ago

(1) and (2) are good points. Particularly 2 because movies may intentionally add steps / slow things down so that a viewer can follow along but this would be at odds to daily use.

However, I still think there's something to be said for movies attempting to build UIs that have a strong aesthetic and elicit an emotional response, whereas production apps feel so flat and boring, in comparison.

I still wonder why we aren't seeing people try to push the envelope stylistically to "wow" users.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

Ask HN: Why don't sci-fi interfaces ever turn into real products?

2 pointskrschacht2mo ago5 comments

Is there a good reason why the UI we see in sci-fi don't make it into actual products?

Maybe there is some true limitation inherent in this style UI which causes them to stay as mere experiments / novelty?

I'm thinking about demos like this which I've seen go by HN over the years (I'm not involved in any of these):

LCARS demo: https://www.mewho.com/ritos/

Tron-like terminal: https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-ui

Sci-fi UI components: https://github.com/arwes/arwes

And I've long been a fan of designers like gmunk doing UI work for film: https://gmunk.com/Oblivion-GFX

But I'm genuinely confused why the actual UIs we all use on a daily basis are all so derivative of one another when the space of UI possibilities is so vast.

5 comments

JohnFen2mo ago

> Is there a good reason why the UI we see in sci-fi don't make it into actual products?

Most of the UIs I see in science fiction are intended to look good on the screen, not so much for actual real-world usability.

krschachtOP2mo ago

This might be a clearer articulation of what I'm trying to get at with my question...

JohnFen2mo ago

> rather than "let's wow users!"

theamk2mo ago

Because they are terrible if you actually try to use them, instead of just seeing them in the movies? In particular,

(1) Human eyes are drawn to moving objects, so unimportant things should not move. That rotating globe with points, or blinking "everything is OK", or jumping arrows would get very old very fast.

krschachtOP2mo ago

(1) and (2) are good points. Particularly 2 because movies may intentionally add steps / slow things down so that a viewer can follow along but this would be at odds to daily use.

I still wonder why we aren't seeing people try to push the envelope stylistically to "wow" users.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse