Evolving the user interface
Last week in San Francisco I spent considerable time talking with people about user interfaces. Opinions differed quite a lot but almost everyone agreed that it is high time to further educate us, our audiences, and our clients in the art of the evolving user interface.
The theory is that at the intersection of AJAX (et al), a wider web using demographic, and our collective skill set, there is a place for moving past the traditional forms, fields and FAQs to help users get involved in the apps and sites that we build.
Examples of this includes having a personable tone of voice in our copy, adding descriptive default data to forms, clear and contextual tips and helpers where ever our audiences might need them, and real-time validation and confirmation indicators.
This is by no means breaking news, and the people behind Last.fm, Basecamp and others have done a very good job of guiding users through their interfaces for quite some time. The key is now to move this practice beyond social sites, creative industry apps, etc.
Business and “consumer” sites in areas such as finance, education, automobile, travel, pharma, agriculture, arts and culture should be the next beneficiaries. The web sites and applications that are often used by audiences that are sometimes less comfortable with the web are the ones that need this the most.
Dave Shepard’s recent post at Smashing Magazine also looks at this topic, and does so with several good examples. While I think that user interfaces are always evolving, they sometimes get stuck in old tracks and only evolve incrementally. At those times it might be better for a user interface revolution rather than an evolution.
