Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them

Re:Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Desig... by rbanffy on Friday December 04, 2009 @06:17AM (#976157)

I have to disagree on the ridiculous part. They are all busy and dense, but they are not ridiculous per se when detached from the movie they came from.

Sometimes, you have to convey a very large amount of information in a very confined space. The glass-cockpits in planes are a good example - very dense displays that require some training to use.

And, once it works, there is little reason not to make it look cool.

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Re:Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Desig... by gaius on Friday December 04, 2009 @07:13AM (#976211)

Some of the best interfaces I have written have been in good old-fashioned curses. If you need a "dashboard" for a complex system for a skilled operator, you can convey an awful lot of information in a maximized xterm on a 1280x1024 screen, it's dense but it's not "cluttered" if you lay it out and use colour intelligently.

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Re:Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Desig... by rbanffy on Friday December 04, 2009 @11:46AM (#976635)

Sure, bit it's useful to convey some information in graphical form. Many of the constructs he employs (progress circles, use of color gradients to indicate data age) are really good.

The main point being, complex data doesn't have to look ugly.

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Re:Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Desig... by sdh on Friday December 04, 2009 @12:33PM (#976769)

ridiculous as in technically absurd. I don't think he meant the design was ridiculous. at least that's my interpretation.

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