The Cooper Journal: The best interface is no interface

At first I thought I would read a rant about current user interfaces, but the article turned out to be well thought, smartly written and, above all, it doesn't discuss interfaces _per se_. It goes up a meta level and proposes eliminating interfaces everywhere, because instead of helping people, they hinder the interaction.<p>During the first few lines I had to convince myself that it is actually a good idea, but they are absolutely right. We are on an interface craze. Everything has a twitter panel, which isn't a bad idea, but most designs nowadays obstruct regular interaction to ease a few corner use cases.<p>Blogs and newspapers hide their content beneath social buttons. Current "Smart TVs" are bad as TVs though they have great facebook support.<p>But, 99% of the time you want to watch the TV, and if you need to press some buttons for that, you're actually delaying and difficulting the main use case.<p>Can I mention Apple at this point? Apple is both hated and loved because of its interface design, but I think they're spot on. If they can define the best interaction patterns with a TV and program then on their future iTV, they might eat the market.<p>What do you think?

I think the main problem is that programs are designed by programmers who think that the users are idiots. Programs designed for programmers have a much leaner interface.<p>e.g. think about accounting applications:<p>You had trained data typists in the 60s, who typed the accounting records in a format, that can be directly processed in a batch oriented way.<p>You had 3270 terminals in the 70s, for trained typists, to enter the accounting data into a form, that was producing the records to be processed in a batch oriented way.<p>User interfaces become more interactive in the 80s, applications become personal, and there was no batch oriented processing anymore.<p>Most accounting software requires the use of the mouse now, so its no longer possible to use them for a trained typist, who prefers that her fingers stays on keyboard.<p>Lets step back:<p>My own home grown accounting software is written AWK. Its parsing a plain text in a markdown like syntax, and producing all papers I need for tax and accounting with a single "make". Calling ":w&#60;cr&#62;make" is F2 in VI for me. The complete accounting system is 88 lines for invoices, 128 lines for monthly tax, 168 lines for annual tax. Its pure batch oriented, requires no database, and I'm using my preferred interface, the VI editor.

I'm curious just how far down the rabiit hole you can take this philosiphy.<p>Just how many APIs and programming interfaces and other interaction points of a computer can be eliminated or automated away or even made to adapt to user preferences?<p>What would this mean for the divide between the Operating System and its Applications?

One reason retailers are chomping at the bits over near field payment is that it will eliminate all the unproductive conversation between employees One and customers. Distracted by their phone, there will be less likelihood of personal interaction. This will leave the employee free to pimp magazine subscriptions and extended warranties in strict accordance with the scripts retailers are forcing upon checkout line staff.<p>There's already a great interface for taking people's money which doesn't require a location aware electronic device. It has a face and a uses natural language.<p>(Now, get off my lawn).

Some of the same points Aza Askin did a few years ago on his <i>Don't make me click</i> presentation[1] :<p><i>"The best interface for a shovel is a hole where you need it"</i><p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuELwq2ThJE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuELwq2ThJE</a>

I thought this was great. Learning from the users as much as possible in order for the interface to get out of the users way is a solid idea that can be incorporated into nearly everything... you just have to not implement it in a Clippy "Did you mean..." kind of way.

Non-interactive is far better than interactive. Faster, more efficient, more secure, less error-prone, less repeated effort. It's less work!<p>But there is an army of UI designers fighting against common sense. I'm sure we'll hear from some of them in this thread.<p>djb nailed this problem on the head when he wrote about the UNIX interfaces. Quoting rules, special characters... it's a minefield even if you are a "UNIX command line guru". There's a high cognitive price to pay if you are trying to avoid all mistakes using this interface.<p>Solution: Remove the user interfaces. Programs interface with each other, not the user.<p>Non-interactive = less work. You start the system. It runs. There is no interaction. No ongoing cognitive price to pay other than monitoring.<p>And this is only the command line. Dare we look at the price imposed by GUI's?<p>Imagine a slide show where you had to click each and every time you want to see a new slide. Nice CSS! Wow, that Javascript is amazing! The page is so beautiful! Click, click, click. (Developers rejoice: We can track the clicks!) Now imagine you are the user and the slide show is 10,000 slides. Forget it.<p>Mechanize? Perl, Python, Ruby? JQuery? Give me a break. Why should people even have to waste their time writing such things?<p>Hey no problem! The kind developers decide to add an option to run the show on auto-pilot. Hurray. No more interaction is needed.<p>Think again.<p>Now imagine you have view 10,000 different slideshows to view and each one has a different way to start the auto-pilot mode based on the developer's own idea of "user experience".<p>You are right back where you started. Find the auto-pilot button. 10,000 times. Interaction.<p>A "slide show" is just a random example. You can apply this almost any sort of information intake where "interfaces" like GUI's are involved.<p>Go to a library and watch people trying to use various computer databases. In almost all cases, you will see them spending noticeable effort just to find things to click, and reading onscreen instructions. Every database is different. Every interface is unique. End-users: make 'em work.<p>The entire web is like this. Every web developer wants users to interact. Why? It's too much damn work. For users.<p>Will it ever change? Doubtful.<p>There is an entire industry built around forcing users to interact regardless of whether it is truly necessary.<p>For every person working to build an automated system there are two more building a system that forces user interaction.<p>Sometimes nerds, e.g. those familiar with Lisp or Scheme, say "everything is a list". Can mere mortals who know nothing of "programming" make lists? Is there any literate person on the planet who hasn't made a list?<p>"List processing".<p>Too _boring_. (It certainly isn't too _difficult_. Even the grandmother who can't use a computer can still make lists just fine.)<p>I know, let's build an "interface"! For humans!<p>Good grief.

Apparently the best page is blank without JavaScript enabled, too.

Very good article, but I was initially turned off by the anachronism of the commands it starts with. Referring to NTFS in a scenario purporting to be before 1984 throws me off and makes me assume the article is poorly researched.