Interfaces : New and old

With the introduction and success of the new Windows metro UI, a lot of debate has been spurred on between the different approaches to designing digital Interfaces. Apple's designs are skeumorphic, they try to imitate and reflect the apparent 3Dness of the real world with textures, shadows and such devices.
Windows has come up with a design based on pure typography, information design and ease of use, inspired from the stark functionality of airport signage. It's almost Bauhaus-esque. Personally, I think it's a winner.
What is the need of imitating real life in the interface, when it's clearly digital? That time is long gone when we were unfamiliar with digital tools and needed a sort of bridge to get us to feel more comfortable with a device and its UI. However, as with everything in design, context is of utmost importance. Skeumorphism maybe be getting old now, but it still has its pros.

What really grabs my eye when I roam the internet these days is the rising interest in the analog interfaces of  yore. I remember my mom mentioning that she wanted a DSLR like mine because she loves the sound that the shutter makes when a photo is clicked. It seemed more authentic, old school and has a certain  characteristic to it. The tiny click of a digital camera is simply not that much fun.
On one hand I see that newer laptops are striving to make their interactions more silent and unobtrusive, and on the other I see an app designed just for the purpose of making your laptop keys sound like a typewriter's.
http://fffff.at/noisy-typer-a-typewriter-for-your-laptop/


The feeling of getting a hand written letter from someone you care, can never be replaced by the structured emails of today. It is perhaps this emotion that drives us to look into the past, reminiscing about our old devices and trying to integrate those interactions in the objects we own now..

A 'fruitful' walk

I took my friend's camera and walked the road that i have walked umpteen times in these past 3 and a half years.( from college to the hostel).Only today, i looked at even the smallest brick for a good composition, for an interesting pattern that i could capture.

But this post is not about my photography experiments.On my way back, i stopped at a fruit stall to buy myself something for an evening snack.Yes, i eat healthy.

After i was done paying; the shopkeeper asked me if i could click a picture of his stall and print it out.I willingly agreed to take a picture , but i told him i couldn't manage a print out right there and then.I asked him what he wanted it for.He said he wanted to put up the picture on google!

"I want my stall and its name to appear in the fruit image search on google"

His comment made me marvel at the mass proliferation of the internet.And i realized that for a lot of people; google was the internet...

It just goes on to show their massive success ; that even a roadside fruit seller wants his stuff up there, for everyone to see, and for that he thinks of google.

I promised the guy that i would put the picture up on the internet.So here.

Networked!

Turn on the computer.

Connect to the internet.

Launch ie /firefox /chrome /safari (I wish )

Gmail, facebook, twitter.

The routine that I, and I’m sure a lot of us, go through everyday; multiple times throughout the day. These days though, I find myself favoring twitter over any other social networking site. Part of the reason why this change has taken place is because I find myself getting increasingly bored by facebook. The same old applications, the interface that changes, but still remains repetitive and dull; and the brainless quizzes have taken a toll. To be fair, I never was a fb addict in the first place. So this change is not so astounding.

But it surely makes me wonder: Do social networking sites have an expiry date? I remember checking my orkut account religiously some time back. I dint even realize when I stopped. It was a sort of slow severing of connections between us. And now, as more and more of my friends join twitter, facebook recedes a little into the background (for me). True, the things one does on either of these sites is quite different, but if the success of such sites is measured by the amount of time the users spend on them everyday, then who knows what the future holds? Changes come along so thick and fast nowadays, I guess people are more liable to get bored by the same old stuff in a relatively shorter span of time.

That’s definitely what’s happening to me. Maybe I’m waiting for a change that hasn’t come yet. Otherwise facebook, at least for me, just might go the orkut way.