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by otoburb 1998 days ago
>>I’ve spent some time thinking about why these Fantasy UIs are so fascinating despite the fact they seem not very user friendly.

Fantasy UIs are often flashed up as eye candy to communicate high complexity for power users that an outside observer (i.e. movie viewer) can only dream of properly mastering yet still able to grasp the "key message".
2 comments
jbay808 1998 days ago
Yes, this must be it. Real-world UI design aims to be as easily understandable and usable as possible, even if it falls short. In movies, they want to convey that the hackers/astronauts/super heros have deep expertise. It would be frustrating if you saw them using a familiar Windows Start Menu because you'd feel like you yourself could just step in and do their job.

They could (and for hacker movies, sometimes do) just use a command line, but then it's hard to convey what they're doing to an audience. For a similar reason, important text in a fantasy UI is impractically large, so it's visible when the UI itself is only a fraction of the movie screen.

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phailhaus 1998 days ago
I hate to be a downer, but these fantasy UIs are also completely unusable. They have no actual users, so they can go all-in on flashy complexity without having to solve the problem of "how do I let an expert get work done most efficiently." I have never seen a fantasy UI with spreadsheets, but the fact of the matter is that Excel is much closer to a power-user interface than anything you see in movies.
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otoburb 1998 days ago
Not a downer at all; that's the real truth. The visual eye candy is needed because Excel just doesn't excite anybody but power users, and even then only if the spreadsheet model pertains to their expert domain. I have exactly the same feeling when I see terminal output flashing up on the big screens.
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VRay 1995 days ago
I beg to differ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xubbVvKbUfY

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Groxx 1998 days ago
That isn't really going against their claim, IMO. Complex and inscrutable is part of the point - only the vaguest notes of "oh, that's their goal" are necessary. It reinforces that you don't fully understand what they're doing.
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jordache 1998 days ago
Your statement is spot on, and I'm surprise this rationale even needs to be stated.

Of course these fantasy UI do not go through the same scrutiny as the UI for a real world product.

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