Does it matter that most films offer such an unrealistic depiction of usability? Mainly, no. A movie’s purpose is entertainment, not task performance. So, go ahead and employ user interfaces and interaction techniques that are entertaining and would never work in the real world.
Films are littered with so many other unrealistic plot details: you’d imagine, for example, that the ability to shoot straight might actually be a primary job requirement of Imperial Stormtroopers.
In the film context, unrealistic usability is only to be expected. —Jakob Nielsen —Usability in the Movies — Top 10 Bloopers (Alertbox)
A great pop culture-meets-usability article.
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I recall an episode of Star Trek where Data says “The manual [whatevers] are also off-line.” That seemed strange.
An OK article, but it missed a few of my favourite peeves.
The “access denied/granted” section didn’t even mention what I consider the top movie computer problem, the “override” gimmick. Surely the dumb cliche, where a time-pressured character gets two or three “denied” messages then makes it magically work by typing “override”, appears in enough movies to warrant a mention. Especially as it presumably also shapes people’s expectations about computer security.
Also, the “you’ve got mail” section is really just an update of the old answerphone cliche where there are “always” three messages – the first two (one in a male voice, one in a female voice, and both short) just serve to fill time before the third message which forms part of the plot.
The other day I watched Blade Runner: the Director’s Cut for the first time. The only thing that dated the movie was the depiction of computer technology. The police station has flickering green monochrome CRT monitors; some important plot points involve paper photographs. At one point Decker puts a photograph into a computer, that responds with clicks and chugs as it zooms and pans around the image. It’s clearly supposed to be magnifying the printed photo. There’s a brief moment — a fraction of a second — where a photo of a mother and child seems to move, but I took that as the director’s artistic message about the emotions that photo is supposed to represent.
Brilliant essay! Even just the “look” of computer terminals in movies has been enough to bother me… it never looks realistic, and even the fake look of ASCI-art on DOS screens from the early 90s betrays the wish for GUI in a way that is laughable: log on dialogues take up the whole screen with huge letters, password lookups always play some kind of eye candy while searching the db, ‘you’ve got mail’ icons are huge spinning globes, etc. Whatta riot. Is it all because computer terminals and programmers are aesthetically boring or is it because the animation dept in the film set is itself is projecting wishes? Who knows. Nielsen makes a very good suggestion at the end of his article that these things shape user expectations of their machines. But I think they make more of an impact on the mac user than the pc user… maybe?
Good essay, DGJ!