Interface Relations 1
Volume Number: 7
Issue Number: 6
Column Tag: Developer's Forum
Interfacial Relations, Part I 
By Joost Romeu, Huntsville, AL
InterFacial Relations is the continuation of About Face: The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly, a series appearing in MacTech Journal that discussed the development and
deployment of the Human Interface. InterFacial Relations complements the standard
MacTutor fare. The “source code” it considers is the way an interface looks, acts, and
feels. The source code it provides challenges rather than codifies.
As the Macintosh gains credibility it loses some of the flexibility it had in its
early heydays. As software financial investments and requirements increase,
developers find their nose to the profit driven millstone of a market with its own axe
to grind. Developers no longer have the time or space to express their dreams of a
better way. And it’s showing--in the interface. Ported products show little
understanding of the Macintosh, previously solid products evolve convoluted interface
tumors, and newcomers trade the tried and true for tricks and gimmicks.
Now that the “rest of them” is looking through Windows to catch up with the
“rest of us,” it’s time for developers to explore their dreams again and crucial for
Apple to provide the tools and leadership to encourage developers to expand their
interfacial relations. Interfacial Relations hopes to take part in this exciting challenge
by providing food for thought and debate.
Background:
About Face Part 1 described the foundations and precursors of the Macintosh GUI.
of us,” it’s time for developers to explore their dreams again and crucial for Apple to
provide the tools and leadership to encourage developers to expand their interfacial
relations. Interfacial Relations hopes to take part in this exciting challenge by
providing food for thought and debate.
About Face Part 2 explored the relationship between interface and the real world
and studied the role of metaphor, the Macintosh’s interface lifeline. It came to the
conclusion that the relationship metaphor establishes between user and program may
be educationally useful but is in the end one-dimensional, linear and fragile. One way
you could see the relationship was fragile was because the relationship was mediated by
paper--rather than electronic--glue. Part 2 then suggested an approach it called
“relational interface” to address the real world more contextually, and establish
interface--rather than paper--as information’s exchange medium.
The graphical interface--icons in specific and metaphor in general--is at a
crossroads. Metaphor provides a valuable introduction to the user who has just
abandoned hunt-and-peck for point-and-click. But unrestrained, metaphor may
restrict our vision by cluttering our applications and narrow our focus by implying
that computers merely facilitate, rather than redefine and expand the field of human
experience?
The Macintosh human interface has set standards but is no longer carving new
domains. It’s become a motif to be copied.
Macro concepts such as virtual reality and micro developments such as the
gestural interface of the pen-based computer are beginning to refine the scope and
direction of the desktop interface.1
Initially, computers needed to prove their worth by emulating things we had done
before. Situated between the virtual and the gestural, today’s desktop computers can
occupy a pivotal position only if they emulate less and relate more. Whether facing a