“Working with your Medium” or “The Smokescreen of Touch”
With Interfaces out there like Bumptop and Microsoft Surface, there is common belief that these experiences are the next step in evolutionary interaction design. Here lies the promises of a tangible digital world. One where our traditional senses are more tightly aligned with virtual world experiences. During the early days of the Internet, browsers and HTML technology began rendering images and layout more robustly. At the same time, graphic creation tools began to give budding web designers more freedom. As all artists with new mediums have done, techniques were developed that showed designers how to accurately replicate materials and the designer’s physical environments. I for one loved the day I learned how to make “brushed aluminum” and “spun metals” with randomness and blur filters. A gradient here and a gradient there now gave depth and bevels.
Quickly, “cool sites” began appearing with interfaces looking like the came from an HR Giger piece. Real world, “life like” virtual experiences became cropping up left and right. Navigation backgrounds and footers made of steel and aluminum were all the rage. Anyone who remembers these websites or witnesses them today (you can still see then now and again as young designers test their Photoshop skills), remembers a sense of “uneasiness” to the experience. Despite the intention for replication, the design’s felt “unnatural” and, much to the designers chagrin, completely unauthentic. Closer to reality was the goal, not the other way around. It quickly became obvious that just because you could, doesn’t mean you should.
Another good example of this is in Character creation and CGI work. When you see a movie like Shrek, you never doubt the characters as they are created because there is a purposeful non-lifelike creation in their design. Your brain disassociates reality’s expectations and “goes along for the ride”. Authenticity is more easily accepted because the shackles of expectation are removed. An opposite example of this is was Robert Zemeckis’s Polar Express. I for one found the children in this movie somewhat creepy and would always get distracted from the story because the efforts to achieve “realness” had crossed a, albeit subjective, line.
You see, the space you are reading this very posting in is a different medium. It is a different space. You may project yourself at times into that space, but in the end, you deal with it in a different context than watching television or sitting in a movie theater. No matter how much you try to fool the brain, the consciousness is a complicated mechanism. Peripheral vision and the other senses are so much more involved in perception of reality than we ever give credit too. Depth and effective lighting simple isn’t going to fool a million years of evolution.
Instead, I propose designers work within the medium to create an experience, don’t fight it. Don’t replace something that doesn’t need replacing. I pose the question that just because we stack things with our hands in “real life” does that mean stacking things in “virtual life” creates a more authentic experience? Don’t get me wrong, these explorations are exciting and sometimes fun, but I recommend cautiousness in declaring innovative and next-gen products. You may find yourself going down an evolutionary dead-end.