

I, Interface: Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics Applied to User Interfaces - joshuacc
http://adactio.com/journal/4866/

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sambeau
This makes no sense to me. How about something like this instead:

    
    
      1. An interface must ally itself with the user not the data.
    
      2. How an interface works is more important than how an interface looks.
    
      3. An interface must be as simple as possible but no simpler.
    
      4. No interface is good interface, unless it breaks the other 3 rules.

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wccrawford
Only the first one seems to mean anything. (And the zeroth.) The third one he
admits is a joke.

The second one can't apply to something that can't make decisions
autonomously. The only orders you can give it are very specific ones it's
programmed for. And if you've programmed an interface to do something and it
doesn't do it, that's so obviously a problem that we don't need to discuss it.

0 and 1 mean more, though. Interfaces should protect the user from their
mistakes, so long as they don't prevent the user from accomplishing their
tasks by doing so. This is trickier than it sounds since that much power is
hard to bubble-wrap. Protecting the entire web from bad decisions is even
tougher. Designing a protocol is hard. You practically have to be clairvoyant
to foresee all the possible problems.

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hnal943
_You practically have to be clairvoyant to foresee all the possible problems._

Which is also the point of the original laws.

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wccrawford
Which is fine, when the device in question is programmed to evaluate them
itself. Applications can't do that yet.

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diwank
Have to admit that these are cool ways of looking at the fundamental
objectives of a 'good' user interface.

Honestly, looking at the laws and to interpret them literally does no justice
to them.

