What We Learn from Changes of GUIs

According to the video of Xerox Star, there are multiple files and documents icons shown on the desktop. Those icons are familiar objects we all see in the office, representing different contents such as files, documents, records of files, and files drawer. When the users open the document, a window comes up with the contents of the document. In the videos of Macintosh, I can tell that Susan Kare kept and developed the icons on the desktop. Besides, the macintosh divides the functions of the computer clearer by adding a menu section. Based on the features illustrated in both videos, the modern interaction design we have seen today evolved from original interfaces. The menu bar we are using on today’s desktop is more completed and dynamic. Today’s designers add motions, animations, and interactive elements to the interfaces to achieve a better user experience.

Take Apple’s Dock as an example, which is also known as a taskbar located at the bottom of the desktop, when I put the cursor on the icons in the taskbar, it highlights the applications’ name simultaneously. Additionally, when you minimize one of the windows, it shrinks to the dock.

As Stewart Brand mentioned in the article Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, “We can examine the array layer by layer, working down from the fast and attention-getting to the slow and powerful. commerce may instruct but must not control the levels below it, because it’s too short-sighted”. In terms of efficiency, visuals on interfaces are fast and attention-getting to the users. However, if we want to change slowly and powerfully, designers need to help them guide users’ behavior through interactive and motion techniques. For example, users know to find the documents or windows closed recently on their dock(taskbar) because of the shrinking motion of windows. As such, for UIUX designers, It is important to establish Interactions between interfaces and users based on motions and user behaviors in the future.