
The Future of User Interfaces: Data Visualization - apievangelist
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_future_of_user_interfaces_data_visualization.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4dd20b3d7c1d9428%2C0
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elliottkember
I disagree with this article, and agree with the reviewer. The application is
not useful at all, and what could have been an excellent UI, given a little
more thought and power, is unfortunately just lipstick. Tracks and artists are
grouped in 3D space by name alone, and their arrangement and spacing is
meaningless. This makes the app a pretty, but useless skin of a simple
playlist.

I think the design lends itself to music discovery, not playback. Hooked up to
rdio or Spotify, this could be a fun way of exploring new music by proximity.
Like this song? Here's 5 other similar artists nearby.

To me this speaks volumes about data visualisation. Done incorrectly, it's
useless. Useful and simple will hopefully win over beautiful but impractical.
You can't start with beautiful and add useful later.

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Silhouette
> To me this speaks volumes about data visualisation. Done incorrectly, it's
> useless.

I think it's worse than that: poor visualisations are counterproductive.

Visualisation techniques are practically valuable when they let the user
understand something that would not otherwise be clear. For example, a tool
might analyse a complex data set and use a visualisation that highlights facts
that are relevant to answering a particular question.

In this case, I don't see what the visualisation tells us that simple tabular
playlists don't. It doesn't appear that any use is being made of the extra
visual degrees of freedom offered by the astronomical metaphor, and extra
visual degrees of freedom (spacial relationships, colours, sizes, shapes...)
are usually what makes a good visualisation technique effective.

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dmlorenzetti
_In this case, I don't see what the visualisation tells us that simple tabular
playlists don't._

To extend your theme with an example-- with a tabular interface, one could
sort by song title, in order to listen to covers of a favorite tune. This
star-planet-moon interface apparently locks the viewer into sorting only by
artist, then by album. That, even more than the wasted opportunity, makes it
actively counterproductive.

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DevX101
>One reviewer of the app on iTunes coolly dismissed Planetary as "visually
appealing but useless." ...With all due respect, that critic is missing the
point.

No, he didn't miss the point. He hit the nail on the head. The purpose of data
visualization is to help the user quickly understand complex data. This
planetary visualization just adds another layer for my brain to parse while
giving me nothing in return.

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rushabh
I believe the future user interfaces are going to be minimalistic and non-
patronizing (like Hacker News).

The interface shown in this article (and similar) have a very high learning
curve and are counter productive (generally).

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ThomPete
That really depend on what the goal of the interface is. For quickly finding
the song/album you want yes, for exploration not necessarily.

It would be a stretch to call HN the future of interfaces unless you refer to
the underlying algorithms.

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rushabh
What I meant was that the trend would be more towards minimalism and simple
metaphors rather than 3D realism. I don't say that highly visual interfaces
don't have their place.

I would say the difference is like the difference between a the UI of a book
(minimum visual representation) v/s a movie (highest visual representation).
If I have to take an honest pick, and I believe I can be wrong, is that most
user interfaces will have more abstraction than specific representation.

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ThomPete
We are entering an era where the consequences of our interaction with machines
won't exist in a one to one relationship but rather in a one to many and many
to one.

Attempts to manipulate or browse large amounts of data will require much more
from the machines than from the humans controlling it.

Any routine initiated by the user will be have to be followed by a very large
set of sub-routines in order to provide feedback. It might even have to
anticipate what kind of feedback the user want.

Visualization is going to be the feedback but I don't believe the interface is
going to be the screen.

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markkat
I think you can change interface, but you can't fundamentally change our
sensory organs or how we process information (at least not with an app). We
have a biological bias to certain interfaces.

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CognitiveLens
To some extent you are right, but our biological systems are also highly
adaptable to new interfaces - e.g. keyboards, home appliances, cars.
Interaction design does need to support user perception of how to interact
with a device/system, but these affordances can be combined and developed into
highly original and useful interactive applications.

I agree with others that Planetary does not address these design challenges
effectively, but it's important to recognize the adaptability of our sensory
systems to fundamentally 'new' ways of interacting with the world.

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markkat
>but it's important to recognize the adaptability of our sensory systems to
fundamentally 'new' ways of interacting with the world.

I'd say in most cases, good design asks us to adapt less, rather than more.
Keyboards have finger-sized keys, arranged in a heuristic manner informed by
linguistics. The keyboard minimizes effort between the brain and text.

I agree that Planetary is not effective, and here's why: Planetary
arrangements don't map onto music collections naturally, and they do little to
inform the organization. Planetary asks us to learn more, to do less. A better
music collection interface IMO, would be one where dimensions were informed by
music and song information, not planetary physics.

