Desktop Metaphor
# Beyond the Desktop Metaphor
An interface that intentionally exploits the vulnerability of human beings for financial or otherwise selfish gain is inhumane and also despicable.
An interface that unintentionally allows the former to take place has
not been considerate of the full extent of human fragility, and is therefore still inhumane.
Isn’t this just design justice? Considerate design. Desktop metaphor is also just really outdated.
How do we move beyond sliding and tapping and explore other ways of interaction design? Reimagining applications and instead using modules and workflows
# Browser Metaphors
Linus Lee on Materials
What is the right software metaphor for “a point in my browsing history”?
- Something discrete like files? Or something continuous like a video recording, from which you can “clip out” a section?
- Do we want hierarchy, so we can organize sessions into sub-sessions? Is browsing history a flat sequence of events, or sections with sub-parts?
- What should each “session” remember about its contents? Just the URL? Maybe occasional screenshots? Scroll history?
- Do browsing sessions have weight? A session with two windows and 30 tabs each certainly feels heavier than one where I just Googled a question and found an answer in the first tab I opened. How does this manifest in the metaphor?
- Some browsing sessions are definitely more salient and important to remember than others. How should we express this property?
A lot of this feels familiar to Atlas Recall