Viewer-Friendly Interface: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Casey:''' ''"I'm installing 'Cinema-OS', the operating system used in the movies."''<br />

'''Andy:''' ''"Any downsides?"''<br />

 

Any computer interface that is designed to be seen on television, as opposed to actually be useful for the user.

* Because ALL your users are important, not just the legitimate ones, people caught trying to hack in will be shown blazing skull graphics and screaming sound effects, rather than say just cutting off their access or reporting the illegal access attempt to the control room.

 

 

Can be [[Truth in Television]], as programmers like you to know that [[The Coconut Effect|"Yes, the computer is working."]]

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* The Magi from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' use a particularly flashy multi-layered holographic interface, and see fit to blank out every display in [[The War Room|Central Dogma]] if something bad happens. Which it inevitably does. With great frequency.

** To be fair, they are supposed to be highly advanced [[A Is]]; they probably feel that they have to show a flashy interface in order for the humans to pay any attention to them.

** It's also somewhat averted whenever Ritsuko needs to modify them; she has to engage in a lot of rapid-fire typing to create a lot of what is probably total gibberish, but looks surprisingly like some C-like programming language. Once she's done though, this trope snaps back in full force.

*** Also, the MAGI supercomputers are heavily implied to be three Beowulf clusters, given by the fact that small segments are cracked in episode 13

** L's Apple-style interfaces, particularly in the [[Hacker Cave]], border on this, but they stop short of being downright impractical. Let's say he programmed in the [GUIs] to amuse himself during a slow week.

* Another notable aversion in ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', which doesn't use anything more complex than Windows XP.

* Often played for comedy in ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' with Gunmen interfaces sprouting a number of whimsical, spontaneously generated, and often personal icons, like when Kamina first tried to pilot the Gurren and the monitors seemed to be displaying a "No Kaminas" sign.

* Many ''[[Real Robot]]'' shows seem to have bizzarely simple cockpit configurations... how the hell can you make a [[G Gundam|giant robot fence with a steering wheel]] or even fight at all in a melee combat using only two joysticks and some pedals?

** Viewers never get a good look at an actual computer screen. The flashiest interfaces exist within [[Cyberspace]] and could be attributed to the users' minds making sense of data, while cyborg users can have their perception enhanced with AR elements if they desire -- including adding extra elements (that no one else can see) to a normal computer display.

* Partially averted and partially played straight in ''[[Digimon Adventure]]''. Koushiro's laptop is a [[Bland-Name Product]] of Apple's products and generally does a good job of behaving as such, but occasionally things in the vein of this trope happen, like Gennai walking across the screen to deliver a spoken message. In the second and [[Digimon Adventure 02|fourth]] films, the computers there are Windows 95/98 and generally act the part, again with a few viewer-friendly oddities like the captured and emailed Kuramon in the fourth appearing on the desktop and being moved by Koushiro into a virtual refrigerator sitting in the middle of said desktop, and all the emails in the second opening up of their own accord upon receipt.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* Oracle's computer interface in ''[[Birds of Prey]]'' looks nothing like a normal OS, but instead seems to be something she created herself (it often prominently features her "mask" logo). Probably justified in that she is a computer genius doing highly unique work, and is perfectly capable of making software especially suited to her purposes.

* In Last Stand of the Wreckers, Verity types up a farewell letter on her laptop. In the trade paperback, writer James Roberts comments that he can never look at that panel without thinking 'Dear Ultra Magnus, by the time you read this you'll have discovered that I have a thing for oversized fonts...'

** Besides, the computers shown in the movie belong to the Macintosh Quadra series that didn't run Unix but Mac OS 7 and 8.

* ''[[Bridget Jones|Bridget Jones's Diary]],'' featuring messages displayed one letter at a time. This is actually real, if outdated. You can still find programs that allow for realtime chat that show exactly what is typed, when it's typed, but your average person wouldn't use one.

** Admittedly, this is a computer getting a feed produced by the film's fictional Weyland Corporation, the founder of which is the "pioneer of modern robotics", but this takes place and was ''filmed'' in 2004, so this would have to be a case of [[Instant AI, Just Add Water]] in that case.

* Computer usability guru Jakob Nielsen has written a list of the [http://www.useit.com/alertbox/film-ui-bloopers.html Top 10 Usability Bloopers in the Movies]

** He should see ''Star Trek IV''. It illustrates his point about the time travellers brilliantly- [[Crowning Moment of Funny|"Hello, computer."]]

** The outside computer still plays the progress bar trope pretty straight though, even though it's the computer in the cave, with the box of scraps.

* ''[[Hackers]]'', in which the Gibson supercomputer represents the various virus and hacking activities with super-flashy 3-D graphics. It has been noted that many of the basic viruses and techniques demonstated are based on real information, horribly extrapolated; it has been theorized that the visual displays were a cross between making these highly technical activities interesting to [[Muggles|the average person]], and a kind of [[Lampshade Hanging]].

** The F/A-18 fighter's display is not only much more advanced than most F/A-18 HUDs, but also is kind enough to tell you why a missile didn't fire in detail.

** The "Uploading Virus" progress bar.

* Generally [[Averted]] in ''[[The Matrix]]'' trilogy. A particular example is in ''Reloaded'', with Trinity working with a bog-standard Unix command-line interface to launch what is a plausible-looking attack. (The famous green-scrolling effect may well be an attempt to develop the most viewer (or at least user) ''unfriendly'' interface. There is comparatively little "real-life" UI shown - a holographic display on board the ships - but most of what's left is handled by jacking in.)

** The tools used (nmap) and ssh bug exploited (CRC32 buffer overflow) were [http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4831 mostly real] with only a small amount of Hollywood expediency thrown in.

* Averted, for the most part, in the Swedish versions of [[The Millennium Trilogy]] films, with both Blomkvist's and Salander's computers clearly being Apple computers that actually run [[Mac OS]]. All of the software that both of them run are standard Mac applications, with the particular exception of Salander's hacking program being different, appearing to instead be more [[UNIX]] based.

* ''[[The Incredibles]]''. Let's start with the fact that what's apparently meant to be Syndrome's "master computer" is the only thing in the room it's in, [http://a.imageshack.us/img683/252/syndromeslair.jpg if it can even be called a room]. Then there's the usual huge text even though the screen itself probably dwarfs some of the ones the film was shown on in theaters; the [[Highly Visible Password]] (which happens to be [[The Password Is Always Swordfish|the codename of the project]]); the fact that the most plot-relevant information instantly comes up like a slideshow without any searching (except when Mr. Incredible checks to see if the locations of his wife and Frozone are known)... the whole thing pretty much touches every base and slides into home.

** The entire point is the computer is isolated so anyone getting into it has to run the gamut of the security system. If they so much as sneeze while using it, they're incapacitated. Syndrome thought that the only people who could get in were himself and his trusted minions.

* [[Despicable Me]] plays with this. While the "CookieOS" that controls the cookie robots is fairly normal, it does mean that a completely functional GUI operating system was created specifically for the purpose of controlling one-time use cookie robots.

 

** Although the original ''[[CSI]]'' is terribly guilty of color-coordinated (neon-blue on black, since you ask,) display-each-hit search screens, ''CSI: Miami'' is considerably worse. Whenever a suspect's information comes up on screen on glaring green over orange, it displays a blank form upon which letters pop in one at a time, Power Point-style, making viewers and investigators wait several seconds before reading anything useful.

* [[Dexter]] zig-zags on this trope - sometimes people will be seen using computers in a fairly normal fashion - for example, Dexter's home computer, which changes around a bit but mostly looks like some brand of Linux, or [[Mac OS]]. Then we go into his lab, where everything is designed for blind fools and the computer knows to helpfully label every sample in 72pt text. And then someone sends Dex a text and the words 'MEET ME' will take up the ''entire screen''.

** "Highly advanced"... and also totally unworkable, if not unintelligible, for the simple reason that the vast majority of "data items" displayed are strings of numbers ''and nothing else''. No labels, no indication of what the numbers mean, no nothing. There are some exceptions, but most of what LCARS shows is random sequences of digits -- numerical gibberish.

*** Meaning it's actually an aversion of this trope, as it conveys absolutely nothing of any value to the viewer...

**** Although usually you can't see that closely in standard definition. A lot of the screens (known on set as Okudagrams after one of the prop designers) have a number of in-jokes and random humor (including a duck or two on the Engineering screen showing the Enterprise cutaway).

*** [[Fridge Logic]] or [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], [[Your Mileage May Vary|take your pick]].

** Of course, that hasn't stopped all manner of Trek-related games, programs, and websites from designing interfaces in the LCARS style. There's even a [http://www.lcars-terminal.net/ program] to revamp your desktop LCARS-style, complete with a library computer.

** Thankfully, the series seems to have moved away from this (well, most of the time).

* ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' embraces this trope more and more every season, to the point of invoking [[Early Installment Weirdness]] when going back and watching older episodes where they had to actually get off their asses and do some actual police work once in awhile.

* The SGC dialing computer in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' is remarkably flashy for something supposedly '[[MacGyvering|MacGyvered]]' together by military scientists and technicians to interface with advanced and unknown technology. It's impossible to show on a still image, but the Stargate glyphs are animated, flying out of the picture of the top chevron and into their cells. That said, the Ancients seem to have been addicted to [[Holographic Terminal|fancy holograms]], so maybe it's their influence seeping through.

** On the other hand, the folks on later seasons of ''SG-1'' and on ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' [[Product Placement|very clearly use Dell computers]], many of them very obviously running [[Microsoft|Windows XP]].

{{quote| '''Gibbs:''' Zoom in on that. * points to something on screen* <br />

'''Abby:''' * type type type* }}

* ''[[Ghostwriter]]'' famously had a word processor that was just a blue screen with large text, typical of early programs like WordStar. ''The New Ghostwriter Mysteries'' used a more typical word processor, but the text was still impractically large for standard use.

* The G&G Network on ''[[Profit]]'' was designed with a punch-button interface (complete with a giant fake hand pressing the button on the screen), an organization system based on a slow-moving-but-cool-looking hallway theme, and only was able to depict people in cube-format... Still, it was cool how they exploded when people get fired.

* In the British miniseries ''The Last Enemy'' every computer reads every single word on the screen in a synthesised voice, ''even those the user typed in themselves''. Apparently [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] default computer settings assume impared vision and are very difficult to change.

* Inverted out-of-universe in the console version of [[Dragon Age 2]], which had fonts so tiny they were unreadable unless you were using a massive TV or were sitting three inches away.

** A lot of console games designed for showing off a console's HD capabilities suffer from this when played on a standard definition screen. Text often shrinks to the point of illegibility.

 

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* [[Fairly Oddparents]] - Timmy wishes himself inside of a computer. What he sees essentially is everything defined above, from extremely graphical email programs and colour coded progress bars that take up the entire screen to what is essentially a [[Hollywood Hacking|physical manifestation of a computer virus]].