*This is the right time to be having this debate.
http://www.elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-no-ui
" ‘The best design is invisible’ is the interaction design phrase of the moment. The images above are from my ever-expanding collection of quotes about how design and technology will ‘disappear’, become ‘invisible’ or how the ‘best interface is no interface’.
"The Verge has recently given both Oliver Reichenstein and Golden Krishna a platform to talk about this. This has spawned manifestos, films, talks, books, #NoUI hashtags and some debates about what it might mean. I’ll call this cluster of things ‘invisible design’.
"I agree with some of the reasons driving this movement; that design’s current infatuation with touchscreens is really problematic. I’ve spent the last eight years rallying against glowing rectangles, studying our obsession with screens and the ways in which this has become a cultural phenomena. In response I have been researching and inventing interfaces for taking interaction out from under the glass.
"But I also take issue with much of the thinking for a few reasons that I’ll outline below.
"1. Invisible design propagates the myth of immateriality
"We already have plenty of thinking that celebrates the invisibility and seamlessness of technology. We are overloaded with childish mythologies like ‘the cloud’; a soft, fuzzy metaphor for enormous infrastructural projects of undersea cables and power-hungry data farms. This mythology can be harmful and is often just plain wrong. Networks go down, hard disks fail, sensors fail to sense, processors overheat and batteries die.
"Computing systems are suffused through and through with the constraints of their materiality. – Jean-François Blanchette
"Invisible design propogates the myth that technology will ‘disappear’ or ‘just get out of the way’ rather than addressing the qualities of interface technologies that can make them difficult or delightful.
"Intentionally hiding the phenomena and materiality of interfaces, smoothing over the natural edges, seams and transitions that constitute all technical systems, entails a loss of understanding and agency for both designers and users of computing. Lack of understanding leads to uncertainty and folk-theories that hinder our ability to use technical systems, and clouds the critique of technological developments.
"As systems increasingly record our personal activity and data, invisibility is exactly the wrong model.
"By removing our knowledge of the glue that holds the systems that make up the infrastructure together, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to begin to understand how we are constructed as subjects, what types of systems are brought into place (legal, technical, social, etc.) and where the possibilities for transformation exist. – Matt Ratto (2008)
"In other words, as both users and designers of interface technology, we are disenfranchised by the concepts of invisibility and disappearance.
"2. Invisible design falls into the natural/intuitive trap
"The movement tells us to ‘embrace natural processes’ and talks about the ‘incredibly intuitive’ Mercedes car interface. This language is a trap (we should be very careful with the use of natural and intuitive) that doesn’t give us any insight into how complex products might actually become simple or familiar...."
