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CHARLOTTE DAVIES
“No século XXI, quem controlar o ecrã controlará a consciência” Timothy Leary
Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be “a good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution. There is little possibility of answering such questions about the extensions of man without considering all of them together.
JOACHIM MONTESSUIS AND ELÉONORE HELLIO
Marshall Mcluhan
Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex.
5
We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and
implosion of meaning in the media Jean Baudrillard
Consider three hypotheses: 1. Either information produces meaning (a negentropic factor), but cannot make up for the brutal loss of signification in every domain. Despite efforts to reinject message and content, meaning is lost and devoured faster than it can be reinjected. In this case, one must appeal to a base productivity to replace failing media. This is the whole ideology of free speech, of media broken down into innumerable individual cells of transmission, that is, into “antimedia� (pirate radio, etc.).
2. Or information has nothing to do with signification. It is something else, an operational model of another order, outside meaning and of the circulation of meaning strictly speaking. This is Shannon’s hypothesis: a sphere of information that is purely functional, a technical medium that does not imply any finality of meaning, and thus should also not be implicated in a value judgment. A kind of code, like the genetic code: it is what it is, it functions as it does, meaning is something else that in a sense comes after the fact, as it does for Monod in Chance and Necessity. In this case, there would simply be no significant relation between the inflation of information and the deflation of meaning. Or, very much on the contrary, there is a rigorous and necessary correlation between the two, to the extent that information is directly destructive of meaning and signification, or that it neutralizes them. The loss of meaning is directly linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information, the media, and the mass media.
3. The third hypothesis is the most interesting but flies in the face of every commonly held opinion. Everywhere socialization is measured by the exposure to media messages. Whoever is underexposed to the media is desocialized or virtually asocial. Everywhere information is thought to produce an accelerated circulation of meaning, a plus value of meaning homologous to the economic one that results from the accelerated rotation of capital. Information is thought to create communication, and even if the waste is enormous, a general consensus would have it that nevertheless, as a whole, there be an excess of meaning, which is redistributed in all the interstices of the social - just as consensus would have it that material production, despite its dysfunctions and irrationalities, opens onto an excess of wealth and social purpose. We are all complicitous in this myth. It is the alpha and omega of our modernity, without which the credibility of our social organization would collapse. Well, the fact is that it is collapsing, and for this very reason: because where we think that information produces meaning, the opposite occurs. 7
Rôbo doméstico, que permite realizar trabalhos caseiros. Embora seja ideal a atingir por muitas donas de casa, ainda não se vislumbra uma comercialização acessível às nossas bolsas. Os robôs industriais empregam-se cada vez mais nas cadeias de montagem de muitas indústrias. INDÚSTRIA AUTOMÓVEL
Má qui nas A origem da máquina radica o desejo do homem de facilitar a realização de trabalho.
Ainda que de acordo com a
lei da conservação da energia, seja impossível diminuir
a quantidade de trabalho
necessário para realizar uma
certa actividade, abaixo dum
certo valor, pode escolher-se a forma de o gerar.
NEIL SELKIRK
Porque compram as pessoas computadores pessoais?
domésticos Regra geral, são dois os motivos decisivos para
muitas soluções normalizadas que podem
a aquisição dum microcomputador: por um
adquirir-se sob a forma de programas nas
lado, o computador pode utilizar-se na formação
empresas de software (empresas dedicadas ao
e no ensino e noutras situações derivadas da
desenvolvimento de programas).
organização do lar; por outro lado, permite organizar
A especialização vai ainda mais longe. Existem
o tempo de forma mais interessante.
conjuntos de programas destinados a determinadas
Na organização do lar podem usar-se computadores
profissões: médicos, escolas de condução,
pessoais para organizar uma lista de endereços e
advogados, empresas de táxi, restaurantes e
telefones, efectuar os cálculos fiscais e de seguros,
hotéis, assessores fiscais, agentes imobiliários,
controlar a contabilidade doméstica, escrever à
etc. Algumas das pessoas que possuem
máquina, guardar documentos, preparar a agenda,
computadores pessoais consideram o ordenador
registar os livros da biblioteca ou as cassetes
como um maravilhoso aparelho para jogar. Existem
de videoteca, etc. Além disso, à medida que se
programas para jogar xadrez, numerosos jogos
trabalha com o micro computador, encontram-se
de cartas, o gamão, batalhas navais, corridas de
rapidamente novas e interessantes aplicações.
carros, jogos de “marcianos”, etc. Frequentemente
Ainda mais interessante é o emprego dos
estes jogos são competições com elevados níveis
computadores pessoais nas pequenas empresas.
de exigência. Além de um fundo de sons sintéticos,
Neste campo, apresentam-se constantemente
estes programas fascinam pela sua fantástica
problemas na contabilidade, preparação de
realização gráfica.
facturas, gestão de armazém, cálculo dos salários ou tratamento de texto. Para estes já existem
para quê? Uma instalação informática doméstica costuma compor-se do próprio computador, um monitor com teclado, uma pequena impressora e um ou dois mecanismos de disquete ou fita magnética para o armazenamento permanente de dados e programas.
13
Of course the practice of user interface design has been around at least since humans invented tools.
Ka
When I was asked to write this chapter, my first reaction was “A book on user interface design - does that mean it’s now a real subject?” Well, as of 1989, it’s still yes and no.
User interface has certainly been a hot topic for discussion since the advent of the Macintosh. Everyone seems to want user interface but they are not sure whether they should order it by the yard or by the ton. Many are just now discovering that user interface is not a sandwich spread-Tapplying the Macintosh style to poorly designed applications and machines is like trying to put Bearnaise sauce on a hotdog!
The unknown designer who first put a haft on a hand (axe) was trying not just to increase leverage but also to make it an extension of the arm not just the fist. The evolutionary designer whom Richard Dawkins calls the Blind Watchmaker has been at it much longer; all of life’s star-ding interfitness is the result. A more recent byproduct of the
a “user interface,” but one that repelled end users instead of drawing them closer to the hearth. I recently revisited the FLEX machine design and was surprised to find how modern its components were-even a use of icon-lilce structures to access previous work. But the combination of ingredients didn’t gel. It was like trying to bake a pie from
extant social processes; second, the uniformity, even coldness, of noniconic type, which detaches readers from the vivid-ness of the now and the slavery of commonsense thought to propel them into a far more abstract realm in which ideas that don t have easy visualizations can be treated. McLuhan’s claim that the printing press
industrial revolution called ergonomics in Europe and human factors in the U.S. has studied how the human body uses senses and limbs to work with tools. From the earliest use of interactive computing in the fifties-mostly for air traffic control and defense-there have been attempts at user interface design and application of ergonomic principles. Many familiar components of modern user interface design appeared in the fifties and early sixties, including pointing devices, windows, menus, icons, gesture recognition, hypermedia, the first personal computer, and more. There was even a beautifully designed user interface for an end-user system in JOSS-but its significance was appreciated only by its designer and user. Therefore, let me argue that the actual dawn of user interface design first happened when computer designers finally noticed, not just that end users had functioning minds, but that a better understanding of how those minds worked would completely shift the paradigm of interaction. This enormous change in point of view happened to many computerists in the late sixties, especially in the ARPA research community. Everyone had their own catalyst. For me it was the FLEX machine, an early desktop personal computer of the late sixties designed by Ed Cheadle and myself. Based on much previous work by others, it had a tablet as a pointing device, a high-resolution display for text and animated graphics, and multiple windows, and it direcdy executed a high-level object-oriented end-user simulation language. And of course it had
random ingredients in a kitchen: baloney instead of apples, ground-up Cheerios instead of flour, etc. Then, starting in the summer of 1968, I got hit on the head randomly but repeatedly by some really nifty work. The first was just a little piece of glass at the University of Illinois. But the glass had tiny glowing dots that showed text characters. It was the first flat-screen display. I and several other grad students wondered when the surface could become large and inexpensive enough to be a useful display. We also wondered when the FLEX machine silicon could become small enough to fit on the back of the display. The answer to both seemed to be the late seventies or early eighties. Then we could all have an inexpensive powerful notebook computer - I called it
was the dominant force that transformed the hermeneutic Middle Ages into our scientific society should not be taken too lighdy - especially because the main point is that the press didn’t do it just by making books more available, it did it by changing the thought patterns of those who learned to read. Though much of what McLuhan wrote was obscure and arguable, the sum i total to me was a shock that reverberates even now. The computer is a medium! 1 I had always thought of it as a tool, perhaps a vehicle - a much weaker concep- tion. What McLuhan was saying is that if the personal computer is a truly new medium then the very use of it would actually change the thought patterns of an entire civilization. He had certainly been right about the effects of the electronic stained-glass window that was television - a remedievalizing tribal influence at best. The intensely interactive and involving nature of the personal computer seemed an antiparticle that could annihilate the passive boredom invoked by television. But it also promised to surpass the book to bring about a new kind of renaissance by going beyond static representations to dynamic simulation. What kind of a thinker would you become if you grew up with an active simulator connected, not just to one point of view, but to all the points of view of the ages represented so they could be dynamically tried out and compared? I named the notebooksized computer idea the Dynabook to capture McLuhan’s metaphor in the silicon to come.
a “personal computer” then, but I was thinking intimacy. I read McLuhan’s Understanding Media [1964] and understood that the most important thing about any communications medium is that message receipt is really message recover); anyone who wishes to receive a message embedded in a medium must first have internalized the medium so it can be “subtracted” out to leave the message behind. When he said “the medium is the! message” he meant that you have to become the medium if you use it. That’s pretty scary. It means that even though humans are the animals that shape tools, it is in the nature of tools and man that learning to use tools reshapes us. So the “message” of the printed book is, first, its availability to individuals, hence, its potential detachment from
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O Sketchpad era u linear em tempo r
utilizador interagis
o ecrã do comput
No MIT, em 1963, a tese de doutoramento de Ivan Sutherland, chamada Sket
uma «caneta óptic
TOMATO
um sistema de desenho real que permitia que o
sse directamente com
tador por intermédio de
etchpad (bloco de desenho), fez explodir no mundo a ideia do grafismo em computador interactivo.
ca».
A proeza foi de tal maneira grande e ampla
Pecas de xadrez e bules de cha
que alguns de nos precisaram de uma
lindamente apresentados tornaram-se os
decada para compreender
icones do periodo pos-Sketchpad.
e apreciar a totalidade das suas contributes.
Durante esse mesmo tempo, eu
O Sketchpad introduziu muitos conceitos
adquiri a conviccao de que o conforto
novos: grafismo dinamico, simulacao
e a facilidade com que os humanos
visual, definicao limitada, seguimento de
conseguiam exprimir as suas ideias
percurso por caneta (‘) e um sistema de
graficas eram mais importantes do
coordenadas virtualmente infinito;
que a capacidade da máquina para
e isto para nos referirmos apenas a
fornece-las como fotografias sintéticas.
alguns deles.
Uma boa concepcao do interface
O Sketchpad foi o big bang da
homem-computador incluia, por parte
computação grafica. Durante os dez,
do computador, a compreensao de
anos seguintes, pareceu que muitos
pensamentos ambíguos e incompletos,
investigadores perderam o interesse
tipicos das fases iniciais de qualquer
nos aspectos do tempo real e da
processo de desenho, contrastando com
interactividade da computacao grafica.
as apresentacoes mais completes e
A maior parte da energia criativa
con-sistentes de complexas figuras
orientou-se para a sintetizacao de
acabadas. O seguimento On-line e em
imagens realistas, off-line e nao em
tempo real de um esboço desenhado
tempo real. O próprio Sutherland foi
a mao forneceu-me uma area excelente
um pouco desviado pelo problema da
de investigacao para compreender e fazer
vero-simuhanca visual, isto 6, de quao
avançar a computacção gráfica como
foto-realista e detalhada conseguiria
meio de comunicação mais dinâmico,
tornar uma imagem de computador.
interactivo e expressivo.
Problemas como as sombras, os reflexos, as refraccoes e as superficies ocultas constituiram o foco dessa investigacao.
19
. Lickl Man Computer
With this article, Licklider fundamentally changed how we interact with computers by proposing the novel idea of a symbiotic relationship between man and machine. The computer’s then typical role was a subservient device that performed data operations and mechanical calculations. Licklider suggested that a computer could be more effective as a collaborator,
Symb
Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership. The main aims are to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the lution of formulated problems, and to enable
and that this interaction would
men and computers to coop ate in making decisions and
yield
controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence
results well beyond what
people could achieve on their own . He saw the potential for a dialogue between man and machine, a symbiotic partnership that could unleash tremendous creative potential, made
on predetermined programs. In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Preliminary analyses indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations
possible by the ease, immediacy,
much more effectively than man alone can perform them.
and flexibility of a keyboard
Prerequisites for the achievement of the effective, cooperative
and real-time graphics display. This foresight was extraordinary
association include developments in computer time sharing, in memory components, in mem¬ory organization, in programming languages, and in input and output equipment.
considering that “Man-Computer Symbiosis” was written when computers were excruciatingly slow and clumsy, with mainframe systems using punch card input and telephone output the norm.
BILL VIOLA
der oses
The fig tree is pollinated only by the insect Blastophaga grossorun The larva of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree, and there it gets its food. The tree and the insect are thus heavily interdependent: the tree cannot reproduce without the insect; the insect cannot eat without the tree; together, they constitute not only a viable but a productive and thriving partnership. This cooperative “living together in intimate association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms” is called symbiosis. “Man-computer symbiosis” is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine systems. At present, however, there are no man-computer symbioses. The purposes of this paper are to present the concept and, hopefully, to foster the development of man-computer symbiosis by analyzing some problems of interaction between men and computing machines, calling attention to applicable principles of man machine engineering, and pointing out a few questions to which research answers are needed. The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tighdy, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by die information-handling machines we know today.
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Engelbart I
Douglas
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by Jon Eklund
You had thought about interfaces, I take it, very early. In the sense that it’s really through workable interfaces that you get to the machine that can augment your work, I mean if you had a bad interface how could you augment, your intelligence and your capacity for work. So, I suppose that’s where your were thinking about things like word-wrap, full screen editing, all of that.
TOMATO
new paradigms
And more. You know, it’s the interface between a human and this whole augmentation system, which is so much more than just the technology, it’s all of what I call the human system and y’know the clothes we wear, the facilities we have, the language we employ, the methods, the conventions, the customs. All of those things are things we’ve had to learn and interface with. So, you’re interfacing with a lot more than just your pencil or something. And so, look as all that changes we can consider... Do you know what matching impedances is? Mmm-hmm Right, it’s like saying “Hey, look you’ve got machinery in here, metal machinery and all kinds of motor sensory machinery that can do terrific things, “I can ride a bicycle backwards” people skateboarding all of that stuff, things that y’know we didn’t think natively we were evolved to be able to do, so what makes you think that the conventions for externalizing our symbols or communicating or manipulating them in any way are an optimum match to our
basic mental motor sensory capabilities. That whole interface can change the very language and the very structure and the very modes we portray our symbols and communicate and think. They could totally look for redesigning to make a better match and we never had the opportunity like that. So we think that that’s the way knowledge, the hard copy is the way knowledge goes and people still are armed with “Hey, desktop publishing and whizzi-wig is the way to go” and I kept saying “That was the way but don’t stay anchored with that look at the options” and so the whole thing about hypertext and structured and all the optual views we built into the system and the way in which you also stay oriented about where you are in that knowledge space and all the optual ways in which you can get to other places, or reach to other objects on there to manipulate them. People all do the point and drag stuff as that’s the way to do it, well that’s a new way to do it but if that’s the only way you’re missing a tremendous amount.
You had thought about interfaces, I take it, very early. In the sense that it’s really through workable interfaces that you get to the machine that can augment your work, I mean if you had a bad interface how could you augment, your intelligence and your capacity for work. So, I suppose that’s where your were thinking about things like word-wrap, full screen editing, all of that. And more. You know, it’s the interface between a human and this whole augmentation system, which is so much more than just the technology, it’s all of what I call the human system and y’know the clothes we wear, the facilities we have, the language we employ, the methods, the conventions, the customs. All of those things are things we’ve had to learn and interface with. So, you’re interfacing with a lot more than just your pencil or something. And so, look as all that changes we can consider... Do you know what matching impedances is? Mmm-hmm
23
Se o hardware ĂŠ o cĂŠrebro e o pilar dos
nossos produtos, o software ĂŠ a sua alma Steve Jobs
Franco Mattes, 01001011101011101.ORG
“A funcionalidade de um computador é uma qualidade estética: a beleza das configurações, a eficácia do software, a segurança do sistema, a distribuição da informação, são tudo características de uma nova beleza.”
BILL SEAMAN
29
1. Display 2. Mouse and cursor 3. Pointing, clicking, and dragging with the mouse 4. Keyboard 5. Memory
The user interface philosophy
6. Mass memory
7. Initialization
8. In everyday operation
9. What the screen looks like 10. Folders
11. Basic folder appearance 12. Open and closed folders 13. The system font
14. The active folder
15. Making a folder active 16. Moving a folder
17. Growing the active folder 18. Scrolling
19. How to scroll 20. Split views
21. The selection
22. Visibility of operations on selections 23. Marking a selection 24. The menu bar 25. Making a menu choice 26. Menu items that do nothing
27. Contents of the menu bar and of the menus 28. Making menu choices from the keyboard 29. The dialog box 30. Text editing philosophy 31. Typing printing characters 32. Keys that alter the meanings of other keys 33. SHIFT 34. ALPHA LOCK 35. APPLE KEY 36. CODE 37. Repeating keys 38. Type ahead 39. BACKSPACE 40. The BACKSPACE buffer 41. TAB 42. RETURN 43. The Edit menu 44. Cut 45. Paste 46. Copy 47. Undo 48. Utility documents and folders 49. The Scrap 50. The Abbreviation Folder 51. The user profile folder
LISA AD
The Lisa user interface is much more than just a mouse, bit-map graphics, a desktop with icons, and overlapping windows. The Lisa user interface is designed to be intuitive. It uses real-world concepts, not computer concepts, and provides familiar office objects and ideas. The natural model enables a user to try things out that would make sense in the real world. In general they directly transfer to Lisa’s desktop world.
The user interface is designed to work the way you would expect it to work. In the office, users open documents, move them around, edit them, file them, etc. With Lisa, the mouse is used to manipulate objects directly. This is one of the key features of the Lisa user interface and is in stark contrast to traditional “computerese� of command languages and textual, mode-driven menus. Because there is no command language, very little typing is required to perform operations. To ensure that Lisa is easy to use and learn, Apple developed LisaGuide, an interactive guide that teaches novices how to use the mouse as well as the basic principles of selection and menus. Once they have been through LisaGuide, they pick an application and start learning through actual use. This seems to be fairly successful; very few users will actually consult the manual.
The use of a common and consistent user interface provides for transferable learning. The user interacts with the desktop and all applications in the same way. For example, titles of documents on the desktop are edited the same way as text within memos or numbers in LisaCalc. In addition to the editing model, the filing and printing models are the same across all applications. The time a user invests in learning the editing, filing, and printing operations immediately transfers over to the next application. Consequently, the second application is easier to learn than the first.
One of the features of the user interface is that it addresses those users learning the system and those that have mastered it. The novice can learn a few operations, just enough to accomplish his task. As the user becomes more proficient with the system, he can graduate to the more advanced uses of Lisa including shortcuts to make his interactions even more effective. In contrast to other systems, Lisa does not burden the expert user with features intended for beginners.
31
Você viu o anúncio de 1984. Basicamente, o Macintosh era uma empresa relativamente pequena em Cupertino, na Califórnia, a enfrentar o Golias, a IBM, e a dizer: “Espera lá, o vosso caminho está errado. Não é por aí que queremos que os computadores vão. Não é este legado que queremos deixar. Não é isto que queremos que os nossos filhos aprendam. Isto é errado e nós vamos mostrar-vos a forma correcta de fazer as coisas e ela aqui está. Chama-se
Macintosh e é muito melhor.”
[O Centro de Investigação de Palo Alto da Xerox] não o tinha percebido muito bem, mas tinha
CHARLOTTE DAVIES
o gérmen da ideia para as três coisas. E as três coisas eram:
interface gráfica do utilizador, computação orientada por objectos e trabalho em rede. 33
The LISA User Interface has two main simplicity and integration. We want
to be easy to learn and easy to use,
try to do things in a simple and int
manner and to build on concepts alre
This LISA User Interface Standards Document presents the external view of what LISA looks like to the user, and expresses a set
familiar to LISA users. An integrate
of guidelines that the LISA development team will use in an effort to achieve simplicity and integration.
system with a consistent user interf
We want all Apple-supplied applications to have the same “feel� to the user, so
that learning is minimized when going from application to application. Where possible, the same operation in two programs should
easier to learn and to use. An integ
be done in the same way and behave the same to the user. A given user action should have a consistent meaning throughout the system. Principles used in constructing
system is also more powerful than a
system features should be extensible to similar occasions, in order to minimize user frustration.
of separate programs that don’t inte
It is hoped that outside vendors will
find it to their advantage to use these conventions as well.
n goals, LISA
, so we
tuitive
eady
ed
face is
grated group
eract.
35
don´t make me Steve Krug
I’ve been telling people for years that this is my first law of usability. And the more Web pages I look at, the more convinced I become.
It’s not “Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away,” when deciding whether something works or doesn’t or “Speak the user’s language,” or in a Web design. If you have room in your head for even “Be consistent. ” only one usability rule, make this the one.1 It’s the overriding principle—the ultimate tie breaker
It means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory. I should be able to “get it”—what it is and how to use it—without expending any effort thinking about it. Just how self-evident are we talking about? Well, self-evident enough, for instance, that your next door neighbor, who has no interest in the subject of your site and who barely knows how to use the Back button, could look at your site’s Home page and say, “Oh, it’s a _____.” (With any luck, she’ll say, “Oh, it’s a _____. Neat.” But that’s another subject.)
X-RAY TOSTADEIRA
think! Actually, there is a close contender: “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” But that one gets its own chapter later.
37
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APRIL GREIMAN
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You were one of the first design Mac in 1984, but I wondered ho computers were expensive and How did you get your hands on invest in something like that?
a day in the life... April Greiman interview by Josh Smith
ners to touch a computer, first ow that happened. At the time d relatively underground. n one? What made you decide to I went to the first TED conference in 1984 with one of the founders of TED, Harry Marks. I don’t think Steven Jobs was there at the time, but Alan Kay, who’s one of the inventors of the Mac, was speaking there. He was working for Xerox Learning Park, where they did research and were designing a notebook or laptop type of computer. After the conference, Harry Marks said, ‘we are going to Macy’s department store. I want you to see this little computer.’ I said ‘no way.’ I’d tried an Amiga prior to the Mac and it was fun, but a little too dopey for me. But Harry was a bit of a mentor to me. He basically invented the technology and software that launched motion graphics. We used to go out on photo shoots together just driving around, shooting things we were interested in. Anyway, he dragged me to Macy’s and the next thing I knew, there was a line around the block, waiting behind me to try the Mac! I was immediately hooked, so I bought one.
128K! How could you do anything with that? Well, exactly! If you look at the some of the work done in the early to mid-eighties you can see the limitation. We finally got a 512k machine, the Mac Plus, which is how Design Quarterly was done. We used MacVision, which was a little beige box that hooked up to a video camera and ported right into the Mac. You could scan over an image and it was tiled out. We kept moving the camera, scanning and repeating.
Totally different process, using computers today… Totally, yes. A lot of experienced designers disapprove of students learning with computers rather than the hands-on methods they learned in school. Do you think young designers are missing out?
I tend to pretty much exclusively work with digital tools. If I’m doing color palettes for buildings and architects I have a huge library of color chips and different systems, so testing colors is still a handson thing. That’s the only ‘analog’ work for us, really. And your photography? I don’t touch film, it’s all digital. All of our printing is digital. I haven’t touched a piece of film for 20 years. I really haven’t. Have your design views changed in light of new technologies or trends?
Not really, I mean the body of ideas is ever expanding, but there are some core things that remain. I see everything as an object in space and have always been interested, since the Basel school days, in creating visual and spatial hierarchies. So for me when web design came into the realm of possibilities, I loved it because I didn’t look at it as a page. I was already looking at it as spatial media that you would journey through space to access information from. What a great thing. I see everything as an object in space… when web design came into the realm of possibilities…I was already looking at it as spatial media Do you feel like websites have a long way to go to embrace that kind of spatial quality? Sometimes when I look at a website, I feel like they’ve just borrowed from other websites, or copied what’s been done in printed work.
Part of it is you know you can make websites in Photoshop or in Illustrator, so everybody is doing that. But, to a certain extent, they are primitive technologies; in terms of the potential of what can be done. It’s just repeating tasks and cut-and-paste and not really thinking. We are sort of subscribing then, to what engineers of the software have thought about this medium of communication. Because, keep in mind, designers like us are not designing the software. We’re not writing code. We’re just using the code. That’s an interesting point. Some of the technology that guides us may also be holding us back… It’s always been a problem that people who actually invented, produced or designed creative tools come from more of a technical background. Let’s say you were a student, learning Photoshop or After Effects. You go take a class to learn it and they would show you 95% of the things you’ll never use in that program. It’s because the people who are designing it are not the ones designing with it. They are not solving the kinds of problems we are. So you kind of have to wade through and get stuck in somebody else’s quicksand of engineering and technology. Keep in mind, designers like us are not designing the software. We’re not writing code. We’re just using the code.
Well that’s the thing about HTML, you can just copy all that code and paste it into your desktop and then just add your own images, it all looks very templative. There are very few, I think, inventive and unique websites. It seems like such a new medium, it has so much further to go and there’s a lot to explore. 41
ROBERT DARROL
The Most When I work with experimental digital gadgets, like new
variations on virtual reality, in a lab environment, I am
always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have
Important profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The
slightest change in something as seemingly trivial as the ease of use of a button can sometimes completely alter
Thing behavior patterns.
About a Technolo Is How It Changes
gy
For instance, Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one’s avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social selfperception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy’s lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering. When developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program. When they design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view. Different media designs stimulate different potentials in human nature. We shouldn’t seek to make the pack mentality as efficient as possible. We should instead seek to inspire the phenomenon of individual intelligence. “What is a person?” If I knew the answer to that, I might be able to program an artificial person in a computer. But I can’t. Being a person is not a pat formula, but a quest, a mystery, a leap of faith.
Jaron Lanier
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Para mim, o computador é a ferramenta mais extraordinária que já
Cada aspecto do aparelho tinha sido estudado ao pormenor, do bege da caixa ao símbolo da maçã mordida (o logotipo da Apple) no teclado. Jobs era assim: gostava de perder tempo com detalhes. Para se inspirar para o design do Mac, percorreu o parque de estacionamento da empresa. Analisava as linhas dos carros alemães e italianos à procura de pistas que pudesse usar no computador. “Repare no Mercedes. Com o passar dos anos têm tornado o design mais suave, mas com pormenores agressivos. É isto que temos de fazer com o Mac”
Braun / mercedes
inventámos. é o equivalente de uma bicicleta para as nossas mentes.
1984
Design é uma palavra engraçada. Algumas
pessoas acham que o design é o aspecto que tem. Mas é claro que, se pensarmos bem, na verdade é como funciona. O design de um Mac não era o seu aspecto, embora isso também fizesse parte. Era, antes de mais, o modo como funcionava. Para projectar algo realmente bem, temos de o perceber. Temos de perceber muito bem para que é que serve. Perceber algo de modo minucioso, mastigá-lo, e não apenas engoli-lo, requer uma entrega apaixonada. Muita gente não se dá ao trabalho de o fazer.
55
Bem, tenho de vos dizer: não fazemos ou de
problema era as pessoas terem-se esquecido nossos funcionários tinham-nos esquecido. que defendemos. Mas, pensámos, como dizer
importância? A melhor maneira que encontrá
quando sabemos quem são os heróis de algué
Foi assim que surgiu a campanha “Think Dif
quem julgamos que são os heróis deste sécu bill seaman
eixamos de fazer porque fica bem. Tínhamos um
o dos valores da Apple. Na verdade, muitos dos Portanto, precisávamos de comunicar aquilo a alguém o que somos, quem somos e a que damos
ámos foi dizer quem são os nossos heróis, pois
ém
ficamos a saber muito sobre essa pessoa.
fferent”, que consiste em dizer quem admiramos e
ulo. Algumas pessoas gostarão de nós, outras não. * 59
i. Julgo que a mestria do artista é ter uma visão singular daquilo que tem em seu redor. Juntar coisas de um modo que nunca ninguém antes fizera e descobrir uma forma de o expressar a outros que não têm essa visão singular
Quando aqui cheguei, o que descobri foram mil e um produtos. Uma coisa espantosa. E comecei a perguntar às pessoas porque é que eu iria recomendar um 3400 em vez de um 4400? Quando é que alguém deveria passar para um 6500, mas não para um 7300? E ao fim de três semanas ainda não tinha percebido. Se eu não tinha percebido ... como é que os clientes iriam perceber?
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‘97 98 *
O iMac é o único computador pessoal que vem numa só caixa, è possível montá-lo e navegar na internet em 15 minutos ou menos.
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Mil músicas As companhias
discográficas
ganham mais
no seu dinheiro
quando vendem
uma música no iTunes do
bolso que quando
vendem um CD.
BRAUN
A Apple está numa posição mui
interessante. Como devem sabe quase todas músicas e CD são feitos num Mac: gravados e
produzidos num Mac. Quase tod
os artistas que conheci têm u iPod e, hoje, a maioria dos
executivos do mundo da música tem iPods.
2001 / 2---
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s i m p l e s m e n t e
f u n c i o n a
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