Interfaces - Change with Care

“Why do phones ring?”

That is how Ellis Hamburger’s foreword to Golden Krishna’s Best Interface is No Interface starts! To draw our attention, obviously:

“They sounded like alarms, shrill electrical burps and gurgles that duly represented the urgency.”

That was when the phone was invented. With the advent of the cell phone, and now the smartphone, the sound of a phone ringing is annoying, even disruptive.

“Why couldn’t someone just text to see if I’m available instead of calling and interrupting what I’m doing?”

 

Hamburger points out the solution of one app, Snapchat. You try chatting with someone on Snapchat, and only if they respond will the app allow you to call. While not perfect (there are many scenarios where this isn’t approach isn’t OK), it certainly is an improvement in many cases.

 

But, as Hamburger says, not all old interfaces are wrong or bad. Sometimes, the new interface can indeed be an improvement:

“The ‘Hey, want to chat?’ text replaces the ring tone.”

Or the remote:

“Why press a button… when you can simply call out the name of the channel you want to watch?”

 

Golden Krishna’s book points out that with the smartphone, the world moved to the mindset that there should be an app for everything. As if an app was necessarily an improvement. Plenty of old interfaces are being replaced without any thought by apps. Like the time when BMW decided that an app to open the car was an improvement to the humble key. Really, he asks. Just consider the steps to use the BMW app (pull out the phone, locate the BMW app, open it, select the option to unlock the car). How is this better than the 2 step process of the humble car key – pull the key from the pocket, unlock the car?

 

As he puts it himself, this then is the theme of his book.

“This book is about taking a second look at today’s screen-obsessed world.”