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If we take a good long look at computers in all their forms today I am personally not surprised some people have trouble using them. The metaphors and analogies are old and they build on knowing the previous generation of concepts, to a certain extent. The terminology is decades old and engraved into our collective consciousness either we want it or not. That does not mean it is good, just that it is there.

In corporate there is the added problem of people having to do things simply because they are payed to do it, not because they want to do it. Combined with corporations being incompatible with how things develop in the tech industry and we have a rather nice mess of people using heavily outdated systems. Some people might be surprised, but there are countless programs and systems built in the 1980's still up and running, performing necessary tasks every single day. Legacy systems are a huge problem since they differ so radically in how we interact with them. Some younger people appear to have a hard time understanding them, just like some older people appear to have a hard time understanding graphical user interfaces.

Retraining a lot of people is a huge undertaking for any organization and the more radical the departure from what is known, the more likely it is very big problems will emerge. I have hopes that with the level of attention and thought going into new interfaces we will not have to suffer quite as many people being confused by them. Humans are beings of habit more than anything else and when we have something we are used to we tend to view the new as foreign and scary.

If we look at the perhaps most interesting and exciting part of the tech industry, the mobile side, there are a lot of good things going on. Most systems have a very recently designed user interface, much better designed for the actual usage of the device and for the most part lacking clutter. The reduction of clutter is a welcome one, because if there is anything to really complain about in the user interfaces we have readily available everywhere today, it is that they are cluttered beyond belief. Wiping the slate clean at this point is not only good, but I would argue necessary. We have kept building on top of the old, stacking thing after thing atop the other, constructing a nearly unapproachable tower of confusing usage.

I am not necessarily one to give infinite praise to Microsoft but in the case of Windows Phone 7 and the demonstrated user interface for Windows 8, I cannot escape the simple fact that they are some stunningly minimalistic and creative pieces of design. Should they end up being a failure I hope we all at least start thinking and question why everything needs to be so complicated for the most mundane and daily tasks. There are a great number of other important questions that need an answer, but as far as the interaction between human and machine goes I like what I see.

I look with great anticipation and interest at what has been going on, is going on and most likely will be going on for some time. From the text-based interfaces up to the very latest in mobile-desktop convergence, things are going to get very interesting in the next 18 - 36 months. I just wonder if it will all catch on, or if we will be using the more familiar interfaces well into the next decade. Just like we are right now.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech journalist from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on Bagel Tech and on his site streakmachine.com or you can follow him on twitter @streakmachine.

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Robert Falck

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