Viewer-Friendly Interface: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:handBiometricsXSmall.jpg
{{quote|'''Casey:''' ''"I'm installing 'Cinema-OS', the operating system used in the movies."''
'''Andy:''' ''"Any downsides?"''
'''Casey:''' ''"Yeah, it can't show any font under 72 point."''
|''[[Casey and Andy]]'' [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip{{=}}163 #163]}}
Any computer interface that is designed to be seen on television, as opposed to actually be useful for the user.
'''Key tenets:'''
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* The application interfaces must not conform to any established UI development standards. They must not share common interface conventions even between themselves (for instance, the facial recognition database cannot in any way function like or resemble the ballistics matching database).
* Superfluous animation and sound is required. When sending an e-mail, for example, it is useful to have an animation of the message folding itself into an envelope and flying off into the ether, accompanied by a synthesized woman's voice informing the user that the email is being sent. When searching through any database (such as a fingerprint database), it is useful to flash an image of each search failure just to let you know the program is working. (In [[Real Life]], this would increase the search time by a factor of 10 or more).
** Also, to prevent operator boredom, don't expect that a search for Erik "Fat Erik" Erikson is going to just show pictures of chubby Swedes it has failed to match - emaciated Asians, black woman and possibly household pets will also feature.
* [[Highly Visible Password|Passwords are never obscured by asterisks as they are typed]]. [[The Password Is Always Swordfish|Passwords are always simple, non-case-sensitive English words]], and never a random combination of numbers and letters.
* Text being displayed, such as incoming email, must appear on the screen one letter at a time, as if it is typed in right then. [[Beeping Computers|Sound effects]] are optional.
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* Computer equipment is highly sensitive to concerned looks, grunting "hmmm"s, and crossed arms. Two or three people possessing the above, standing behind the person operating the computer, will immediately unlock just the right functions needed in the software.
* Every operation for the computer brings up a titled progress bar. This bar will be enormous, color-coded, will obscure the entire screen, and will always say something like "Cracking Into Pentagon: 45% Complete." Most unbelievably for anyone who has used a real computer this progress bar will be entirely accurate.
* Computers can tell what type of file you have not just down to the file extension, but ''what it does'', providing such prompts as "Downloading Virus" or "Uploading Medicine." As shown in the example above computers can also calculate how long things will take and how far you have got even when it is a hit or miss event like finding the top secret plans or Cracking Into Pentagon.
* Touch-screens may be prominently involved, though most aren't installed the right way: they're nearly vertical when they should be nearly flat. It has been proven that constantly raising your hand to touch a screen over a long period of time is unnatural and uncomfortable, to the extent that those in the field have dubbed it "gorilla arm."
* The presence of malware on a network triggers effects such as melting, channel swapping and white noise on all monitors connected to the network.
* 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.
Often, a Viewer Friendly Interface is a front end for a [[Magical Database]], and often made of [[Beeping Computers]] with [[Magic Floppy Disk]] drives. For [[Science Fiction]], however, [[Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future]].
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' anime, Kaiba goes to his [[Hacker Cave]] and uses a computer that follows almost all of the above rules to break into Pegasus's secret database (It does multitask, but then again the screen is 2 by 3 metres). Seeing as it?s also commenting on his mood, it might be more advanced than it looks like.
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** This includes computer-heavy episode ''The day of Sagittarius'', in which Yuki hacks a multiplayer game on the fly by typing C++ code extremely fast in an enormous amount of command line windows in, yes, Windows XP. What she appeared to have actually programmed is a patch that would modify the game when executed, even while the game was running. On the command line, the second to last command is "C:\> bcc32 -W SimInject.cc", which compiled whatever she wrote, and the last one is "C:\> SimInject.exe", executing it. Aside from all the windows she used to apparently write only one file, [[Shown Their Work|computers do work this way.]]
*** Even the multiple windows can work that way, as many C++ projects end up being in multiple files.
* [[
* 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?
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* One of the reasons you so rarely see computers used in comic books is that it's virtually impossible to make the display look even half way decent. ''[[All-Star Superman]]'' showed a monitor head-on once, displaying a word processor with letters that took up half the screen.
* 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...'
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* In ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]] Vs. Predator'' - when this sort of thing would usually require a modicum of human intervention - a computer announces by way of bright red flashing that it's detected an "unusual heat signature" and then zooms in on the satellite photos of the source and generates a map which shortly thereafter becomes a plot point.
** 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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20120812200338/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."]]
* ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' embraced this trope with enthusiasm, though to be fair, this ''is'' Tony Stark's home and company..when an 'outside' computer was used, it used a mostly text-based interface, and unwieldy keyboard commands. (F5 then "i"?)
** 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]].
* ''[[Independence Day]]''
** 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.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* A rare literary example occurs in [[Digital Fortress]].
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** "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).
** This is taken to ridiculous extremes in ''[[Star Trek: Insurrection]]'', when Picard goes from the flight controls of a shuttle to Gilbert and Sullivan's ''HMS Pinafore'' by pressing '''TWO BUTTONS'''. Two more taps initiates a karaoke version of ''A British Tar'', complete with bouncing ball over the lyrics...
*** [[Fridge Logic]] or [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], [[Your Mileage May Vary|take your pick]].
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** It has been speculated that the UI in Star Trek may be more advanced than a mere touchscreen and may include some form of tactile feedback that would make it feel more like pushing a button than touching a panel.
*** As demonstrated by an epsiode of ''Voyager'' in which Tuvok is blind, Trek interfaces have a full featured tactile mode, though it's not the default.
** I think it's important to consider what such an interface is designed to do, as opposed to how it's specifically portrayed. Remember, often the LCARS interface is nothing more than a backlit design on plexiglass, as opposed to a real display/interface. If you consider that these displays would change their options based on which function one is performing, much like existing menu systems do today, it could be a fairly straight-forward design to use on a large-screen touch display. The "touch" thing is a big point as well, considering unlike traditional mouse pointer navigation, the design elements would have to be fairly large for usability reasons (much like iPhone/Android devices now). While such an odd layout doesn't appear on such devices, there are two things to keep in mind. First, such devices are more multi-app based, as opposed to a pre-set purpose (Helm control wouldn't have much of a need for "apps" - just features and options relating to the specific purpose). Second, even as tablets are becoming the new rage, very little thought has gone into developing an appropriate UI for that screen size. Instead, most just use the same layout as a device with a screen more than half its physical size. In the end, LCARS, if portrayed correctly, could be a very decent UI design - for specific-purpose complex systems. Not so much on personal computers or other "multi-task" systems.
* ''[[Bones]]'' frequently makes use of Angela's "mainframe", complete with [[Magical Database]] and holographic display (despite all this modern technology, everything in it usually has a yellow tint), although we don't see the screen of the stylus-controlled tablet device she uses for input. The tablet's interface must be pretty viewer-friendly, because she can create entirely new simulations on the spot with a few strokes of the stylus.
** 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.
* Mid-1990s television seems to be particularly susceptible to this trope; for example, the show ''[[Animorphs (TV series)|Animorphs]]'' did this with regularity.
* Averted in an episode of ''[[La Femme Nikita]]''. The screens have about the font size you'd expect on a real computer, so that things have to be shown in close-up, and the series's computer geek, as [[Voice with an Internet Connection]], first explains to Nikita how to find a process ID and then tells her to type in "kill -9" to make it stop—bog-standard UNIX.
* 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]].
* ''[[Firefly]]'' averts this somewhat with ''Serenity's'' rather simplistic and basic user interface. On the other hand, the interface in Inara's shuttle and the various Alliance computers are much more complex and gimmicky.
** One episode ("Trash") also subverts this trope. When Kaylee and Zoe are trying to install a new hardware part to change the direction of the trash shuttle, the screen shows a Windows 2000 "Found New Hardware" screen.
*** Clearly, things only got worse after Vista. Maybe thats why Earth that was died in the first place?
* ''[[Eleventh Hour]]'' (UK): The third episode features a program which "decrypts" a scientist's encoded mathematical formulas... Into an animated presentation complete with 3d special effects.
* ''[[NCIS]]'' plays this trope semi-straight. Many of the interfaces are somewhat realistic, except for some big text inserted to help viewers (and possibly Gibbs) see what is going on. This approach also applies to the accompanying [[Techno Babble]]. It's not that far off the mark, but the non-geek members of the cast (everyone except McGee and Abby) usually ask for a translation.
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'''Abby:''' * type type type* }}
** ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]'' uses an OS that ''looks'' like [[Movie OS]], but is based on Perceptive Pixel's actual multitouch interface.
* ''[[Ghostwriter (TV series)|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.
* Norton's supercomputer in ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'' never seemed to show the same interface twice.
* 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.
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* Most Linux desktop environments include (or provide support for) ''compositing window managers'' ('''Compiz''' might be the most common) that utilize the system's GPU to render windows, as well as apply complex special effects to them. Earlier versions used to have lots of obscuring or annoying effects only useful as a technology demonstration. Nowadays they are mostly used for subtle user-friendly effects (such as panning between multiple desktops, window previews and smoother animations). The technology was widely popularized when they became an integral part of the system instead of an add-on with Ubuntu's Unity (which originated as a Compiz addon) and [[KDE 4]]'s KWin.
* This also applies to UI designed for netbooks, like MeeGo's ''Clutter'' and UNR's ''Unity'' interface. Justified in that Netbooks tend to have small screens and somewhat limited resolution as well as less processing power compared to their larger and more powerful counterparts.
** In the early days of Vista, people would buy Vista-equipped computers based ''entirely'' off a demonstration of the [https://web.archive.org/web/20100524051845/http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/flip-3d.aspx Windows Flip 3D] feature.
*** That's what it's there for. The fact that it is actually useful once you've trained yourself to use it is beside the point. And they're doing it again in Windows 7 with a new feature - Snap.
*** Just about everyone who has something to say about Mac OS X has something to say about the Dock. And some would say that it falls into this trope.
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* Another example is [http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/ psdoom], an old [[Doom]] mod that turns the processes into monsters that can be shot dead.
* This goes far beyond window managers and basic GUI implementation. Many if not most software applications for general, nontechnical users are designed with copious amounts of flashy bells and whistles that serve little to no actual function. This often sacrifices flexibility on the altar of simplicity. Users with more technical experience often find this annoying.
** Apple's entire design paradigm is based on this. Since the hardcore start digging (or messing with the firmware and hardware) for extra functions from the get go, Mac software and iProducts tend to offer only the most basic and intuitive options to a new user on startup unlike other devices that usually go through a lengthy customization phase.
* This is the principle behind the "[[wikipedia:10-foot user interface|10-foot user interface]]", used for televisions and media servers, where the user is expected to be sitting across the room with a remote, rather than at a desk with keyboard and mouse. Large fonts are used for readability, many functions are available on the remote control, and any onscreen buttons are sparse.
* Most antivirus programs display on screen the name of the exact file they are scanning. You'll have about 1/20th of a second to read each one.
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* 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.
* The ''[[Dead Space (series)|Dead Space]]'' series suits have blinking lights on their ''spines'' to indicate Isaac's vitality and project a holographic interface in front of his face. The latter is angled to seem like it's meant for his eyes but the screen elements are ''huge'' to the point that he would have to turn his head to see them completely (and it ''lacks'' a vital sign reading like the one on his back). Both are clearly visible to the player whose viewpoint [[Always Over the Shoulder|overlooks his shoulder]] and one could argue that they would be useful for coworkers in the suits' original mining context.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=163 Casey & Andy] has a strip about Casey installing "CinemaOS" on his computer, the features of which he lists as the ability to "instantly access any devices, all programs work perfectly, and you can hack into incredibly secure networks". When asked if it has any downsides, he says "It can't show any font under 72 point."
* The geek-oriented [https://web.archive.org/web/20150621141114/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010111 User Friendly] strip has an entire [[Story Arc]] focused around Miranda producing ''[[Movie OS]]'' that functions exactly like those described above, and then fails to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Among other things, it was designed to have its entire security features disabled by typing "OVERRIDE".
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[[Category:Rule of Perception]]
[[Category:Magical Computer]]
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