My theory on the term "user experience" is that the difference between an interface and an experience is that an experience is overt and memorable, whereas an interface is subtle and forgettable.
For real life examples: A door that can be pushed in either direction is an interface. It does its job well, you can use it however you want without any consideration for how it works, and you aren't likely to even remember it was there. A door at the top of a set of stairs without a landing is an experience. You have to climb up the stairs to reach the handle, then climb down a stair or two to move out of the way of the door, as you pull it open, and it might knock you over, so you won't forget that you have to anticipate its use.
This exactly matches the change in philosophy that goes along with the usage of the term "user experience". Someone that creates clearly labeled and accessible buttons or menus that respond instantly will call it an interface, whereas someone who uses abstractions of formerly skeuomorphic images layered inside menus that aren't clearly interactive and require waiting for animations traverse will call it a "user experience".
Anyway, I really liked CDE the first time I used it, about 25 years ago, and I've been using the spiritual successor XFCE ever since. It works great, so I haven't really felt a need tofind something better. That's only been reinforced by occasionally using other people's computers which are running far more intrusive experiences instead of interfaces.
The more time goes by, the more I wonder if I shouldn't search for something better anyway. Despite taking advantage of the built-in keyboard shortcuts, and adding a bunch of my own, most of the time I use a mouse is for interacting with the desktop environment, not within applications themselves, and it's a noticeable slowdown.
I mostly use full-screen windows, so I've never really looked into tiling environments, but I really wonder if I should, just for the faster means to interact when selecting windows and performing operations between them.
"The desktop interface has remained fundamentally unchanged for over two decades, relying on legacy paradigms that haven't scaled to meet new modern needs.
Industry leaders like Apple and Microsoft are too deeply entrenched in their established ecosystems to risk radical shifts. While the Linux community has shown some appetite for experimentation, much of it has nibbled at the edges such as focusing on tweaking window management.
This talk reflects my lifetime experience as a UX designer at Apple and Google and how the deepest innovations happen at the most mundane level: richer input, better data flows, and breaking out of our 2d windowing prisons. Ironically, the open source nature of Linux and specifically KDE provides a unique opportunity to break free from these legacy constraints." - Scott Jenson
My theory on the term "user experience" is that the difference between an interface and an experience is that an experience is overt and memorable, whereas an interface is subtle and forgettable.
For real life examples: A door that can be pushed in either direction is an interface. It does its job well, you can use it however you want without any consideration for how it works, and you aren't likely to even remember it was there. A door at the top of a set of stairs without a landing is an experience. You have to climb up the stairs to reach the handle, then climb down a stair or two to move out of the way of the door, as you pull it open, and it might knock you over, so you won't forget that you have to anticipate its use.
This exactly matches the change in philosophy that goes along with the usage of the term "user experience". Someone that creates clearly labeled and accessible buttons or menus that respond instantly will call it an interface, whereas someone who uses abstractions of formerly skeuomorphic images layered inside menus that aren't clearly interactive and require waiting for animations traverse will call it a "user experience".
Anyway, I really liked CDE the first time I used it, about 25 years ago, and I've been using the spiritual successor XFCE ever since. It works great, so I haven't really felt a need tofind something better. That's only been reinforced by occasionally using other people's computers which are running far more intrusive experiences instead of interfaces.
The more time goes by, the more I wonder if I shouldn't search for something better anyway. Despite taking advantage of the built-in keyboard shortcuts, and adding a bunch of my own, most of the time I use a mouse is for interacting with the desktop environment, not within applications themselves, and it's a noticeable slowdown.
I mostly use full-screen windows, so I've never really looked into tiling environments, but I really wonder if I should, just for the faster means to interact when selecting windows and performing operations between them.
Description:
"The desktop interface has remained fundamentally unchanged for over two decades, relying on legacy paradigms that haven't scaled to meet new modern needs.
Industry leaders like Apple and Microsoft are too deeply entrenched in their established ecosystems to risk radical shifts. While the Linux community has shown some appetite for experimentation, much of it has nibbled at the edges such as focusing on tweaking window management.
This talk reflects my lifetime experience as a UX designer at Apple and Google and how the deepest innovations happen at the most mundane level: richer input, better data flows, and breaking out of our 2d windowing prisons. Ironically, the open source nature of Linux and specifically KDE provides a unique opportunity to break free from these legacy constraints." - Scott Jenson
We're lucky to have him in the open source community
What an amazing guy. Very refreshing concepts. I would love to see them materialize some day.
"Omarchy is Applescript with a chatbot"
...not wrong.
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