“jef raskin”

Click somewhere in this post. Move the cursor somewhere else in it. Shift-click. Intermediate text is selected!

Just found out about this a couple of days ago. It’s always weird and somewhat shameful to learn so late something so basic but by the same token it is always oddly exhilarating. Seems to be particularly useful in cases where click-holding selection becomes unwieldy: when long fragments have to be selected or when a crappy touchpad is the selection tool. (Seems to work only on Windows so far. Seems to work on Windows and Mac so far.)

Humanized, of which I’ve blogged before, has released a trailer of the product (or product line, it’s confusing) they’ve been hard at work for the last 18 months: Enso. The video is interesting though it dwells too much (the first 2/3s) on features (spell-checking, dictionary, and thesaurus) that are not that compelling. It looks a whole lot like Mac’s Quicksilver (of which I’ve become a zealot since I got my Macbook) and on reflection that’s just as it should be. I remember finishing Jef Raskin’s^WP The Humane Interface^AM (Jef Raskin is the late father of Humanized’s Aza Raskin) excited of the revolution he was prophesizing and sure that Quicksilver, the glimpses of it I’d been able to steal, was exactly what he was talking about. That became half the reason I bought the aforementioned Macbook (the other half is DevonThink).

So as far as I can tell it’s a Quicksilver for Windows. I can’t wait to try it. (And wish to hereby make a prophecy: The time and software ecosystem are right for a Cambrian explosion^WP of this kind of parasitic metaprograms.)

I believe that an interface that is both modeless and, insofar as possible, monotonous—all other design features being of at least normal quality for a modern interface—would be extraordinarily pleasant to use. A user would be able to develop an unusually high degree of trust in his habits. The interface would, from these two properties alone, tend to fade from the user’s consciousness, allowing him to give his full attention to the task at hand. The psychological effects of totally (or near totally) modeless and monotonous systems is an area of interface design ripe for experimental study.

If I am correct, the use of a product based on modelessness and monotony would soon become so habitual as to be nearly addictive, leading to a user population devoted to and loyal to the product. Its users would find moving to a competitor’s product psychologically difficult. Unlike selling illicit drugs, marketing an addictive interface is legal, and the product is beneficial to its users; in another way, it is just like selling illicit drugs: extremely profitable.

Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface^AM, p68

With modeless he means that “a given user gesture has one and only one result: Gesture g always results in action a.” With monotonous, that “any desired result has only one means by which it may be invoked: Action a is invoked by gesture g and in no other way.”

(It’s surprising how all this can be expressed by saying that we want the relationship between gestures and actions to be a function^WP, and an injective^WP and surjective^WP one at that. In other words, a good interface is a bijective^WP interface. I remember how hard those words were to me my first semester studying Math. Never thought I’d find them again studying interfaces!)

And regarding the quote itself, it’s a tough sell, because it goes against many of my computing prejudices. But Raskin just might be right—in a truly revolutionary way. We’ll find out at Domburi. ;)

I’m knee-deep in Jef Raskin’s The Humane Interface^AM. You’ve got to love a book on interface design so fundamental and visionary that it dares to ponder such deep digressions as, say,

or take,

This personal description still has me happy—it gives me the hope^ELZR Friedman talked about at the end of his MIT lecture—and, well, befuddled. I mean, how can you do so much in so little time, how? I found it on the about page of Humanized, a collaborative blog on interface design and business-to-be. (He is the son of Jef Raskin^WP btw, that explains some of it.)

Aza Raskin
President

Aza brings over six years of interface design and consulting experience to Humanized. He gave his first talk on interface design at his local San Francisco chapter of SIGCHI at the age of 13, got hooked, and has been speaking ever since. By the age of 17, he was talking and consulting internationally; by age 19, he was coauthoring a physics textbook because he was too young to buy alcohol; and at age 21, he started drinking alcohol and co-founded Humanized. Aza has also done Dark Matter research at both Tokyo University and the University of Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in math and physics. For recreation, he does Judo, speaks Japanese, and invents in his lab. He also enjoys playing the French Horn^WP, which has brought him all over the world as a soloist. Be warned: Aza is an incorrigible punster, so please do not incorrige.

On the flip side, it cheers me up that such blatant^A geniuses (read the entire about page for the rest of the profiles) are interested in my chosen area too. Interface design will be the art form of the twenty-first century. Mind my words.