Viewer-Friendly Interface: Difference between revisions

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'''Key tenets:'''

* All [[Useful Notes/Fonts|fonts]] must be huge, and the resolution must be ridiculously low. This doesn't apply when displaying program code, which must be too small to read after downsampling to the TV's resolution.

* All applications must be run almost full ~~screen -- there~~ is no multitasking on television. Windows may show in the background, but they might as well be wallpaper for all anyone uses them. Conversely, even where the user is trying to concentrate on doing just one thing, it will not be possible to quite eliminate the off-putting spinning graphics and useless other windows.

* All applications must be run almost full screen—there is no multitasking on television. Windows may show in the background, but they might as well be wallpaper for all anyone uses them. Conversely, even where the user is trying to concentrate on doing just one thing, it will not be possible to quite eliminate the off-putting spinning graphics and useless other windows.

* All makers of police database software must put extra effort in making the user interface have pizazz. The UI must have distracting and superfluous widgets, animations, and nonsensical bits of technical-sounding text and random numbers.

* 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).

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* 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?

* The aesthetic of the [[Ghost in the Shell]] anime franchise is partly defined by its distinct manner of visualizing the Net and human-computer interaction, replete with oversized flashing letters, completion bars, dials, meters and windows floating in space. Also, the OS wars seem to be over - every single computer display uses the same look.

** 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.

** 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.

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* [[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''.

* The highly advanced LCARS interface used in the Next Generation era of the ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise is totally unwieldy and would be impossible for a real person to navigate with any kind of efficiency. It would be particularly impossible for anyone to navigate the menu systems by touch, though we see users do this several times (most obviously in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', "[[Clip Show|Shades]] of Gray").

** "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.

** "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).

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* ''[[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.

* 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]].

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== [[Video Games]] ==

* [[Mass Effect]] has Virtual Intelligences. They are advanced computers with a humanoid hologram instead of a screen and they can respond to and produce normal speech, sort of like IBM's Watson. They were likely added so players didn't have to do a whole bunch of reading when encountering a machine.

** While the use of a VI to assist with starting a nuclear reaction is questionable, the ones on the Presidium are meant to be a [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]] since they are explicitly made for tourists.

** While the use of a VI to assist with starting a nuclear reaction is questionable, the ones on the Presidium are meant to be a Viewer-Friendly Interface since they are explicitly made for tourists.

* The game [[Uplink]] is a simulation of [[Hollywood Hacking]]. It has a UI set at a resolution low enough that you can, provides highly visible progress bars for ''everything'', scrolls a list of attempted passwords (complete with individual letters locking into place) when hacking, and has an animation of dialing IP addresses.

** And that's not all! You also get ridiculously simple LAN configuration displays, access screens that have apparently been standardized ''all over the world'', and just for shits and giggles, Elliptic Curve Cyphers that make no sense in real life and provide no reasonable means of unlocking them ''without'' hacking. As in, even the people who ''should'' have access would arguably have to hack it ''anyway''.