The Magic of Kool Aid
I just came across another UX designer looking at magic in UI design. It was really interesting coming across that post. For one, because I’ve recently been considering ways of injecting ‘magic’ into user experiences.
The other big reason that the post hit home for me is that he refers to General Magic throughout his presentation (630K PDF). I happen to have been the first intern at General Magic. One of the first things I did when I arrived was user testing. I absolutely hated everything about it. They laughed at my feedback, treating it as the rantings of a naive kid. Didn’t I realize that the legends of Silicon Valley can do no wrong? The kool aid was being consumed in heavy doses by everyone there, it seemed. Seeing that magnitude of arrogance in action has been an important life lesson I reflect on often.
One of my design concepts at General Magic.
A screenshot from MagicCap (not my work)
The interesting thing is, Sony was one of the partners in General Magic. I spent a bit of time with the engineers from Sony and told them honestly how I felt. I pleaded with them to forget about the lame psuedo virtual reality concept. Instead they should use the technology to build a digital Walkman that can download music wirelessly: any song, anytime, anywhere. Those pesky naive kids, what do they know, eh?
As it turned out, I also worked alongside Tony Fadell while at General Magic. Tony is often credited as the father of the iPod. To me, it was an obvious idea that clearly many other people must have thought of as the technology emerged. I’m always amazed that it took so long to happen, and that so many other bad ideas were pursued instead. That’s been another important life lesson.
Posting your comment
Wayne | October 24, 2006 @ 4:33 am
What year(s) were you at GM? (What year was your PDA/cell phone from?).
I had a MagicLink review unit for a time. I remember thinking it had a lot of features but the interface was insane. What the hell is Picasso “women before mirror” doing as an icon (this links to one’s 16 shades of grey sketches I’m assuming)? The only people that would buy the thing at the time were business people/ rich gadget lovers but the interface had a grade school look to it.
The lure of the virtual reality interface was quite strong – more than a handful of early (and perhaps not so early) web sites had giant image maps of 3D rendered spaces to click on as navigation. And this was when downloading a 50k image was painful.
Grant | October 24, 2006 @ 9:27 am
I thought it was interesting that Mike’s PDF/presso was talking about the use of magic as metaphor for screen, but he only showed industrial design (physical objects) as examples. Perhaps this is because on-screen objects can ‘perform’ magic rather than being inherently ‘magical’. Using an email application we can send ‘letters’ around the other side of the world in an instant – but to us they don’t need to be magic letters to do this. Also, when it comes to industrial design, I think the Wii controller is a great example of how new objects are just as intuitive when they’re evolved from ‘recent’ objects – such as a TV remote. I think most people would think of the Wii controller more of a ‘magic’ TV remote than a wand.
Philip | October 24, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
Wayne, I never knew you had a review unit. I never actually used a released version of the product. I was at GM Jan-May 1992, when I did that ‘mediaphone’ design. I thought it would take 5 years for that technology to hit the streets. It took 10+ years. About the same amount of time it took for MP3 players to become a reality.
Grant, to me it seemed that Mike’s preso focused a lot on screen design. Keeping on the phone/pda theme – I still feel a deep sense of magic whenever I use my Sony K750 to: listen to 2gigs of mp3s, take photos, send email, browse the web. Often simultaneously. And naturally. Oh yeah, and make phone calls. Some people have issues with these all-in-one devices but I really couldn’t live without mine. It’s the best device I’ve ever owned. It brings me joy every single day.
One thing that stuck with me from GM is when Andy Hertzfeld talked about his concept of magic in computer design is when the platform anticipates exactly what you want, just at the moment you realize you need it. Flickr has moments like that. Gmail too sometimes. Lego Star Wars is full of moments like that.
Wayne | October 25, 2006 @ 4:02 am
Yeah speaking of 10 years to become reality – perhaps a future post on here will be about Apple’s iTV?
Philip | October 25, 2006 @ 8:23 am
I had been thinking about that in relation to Tivo. Unfortunately, I’ve never interacted with Tivo (it’s the one thing I feel I’m really missing out on technology wise) so I have no first hand experience to relate.
It’s interesting how Tivo was an elegant hack to achieve video on demand. I really wish I had some experience with it.
With broadband and P2P I have a form of video on demand, an infinite audio/video jukebox. It’s definitely not the same tho – it’s definitely not an elegant experience! iTunes video shows some potential, but it’s way too infuriating the way it’s locked up.
Wayne | October 25, 2006 @ 9:52 am
From a UI perspective, I guess Tivo has already been there and done that. FrontRow is a much simpler interface, which it can be once you are approaching content from the user hunting for specific media (in their own collection or through targeted searches on the ITMS) rather than attempting to gather from the huge mess of what’s being broadcast every day.
But in consideration of the overall conception of the device, which is what you started the post off with – It would be interesting to compare
http://www.larwe.com/museum/apple4120.html
with
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/12/itv/index.php
While the hardware specs from the 1995 box are well-known, you are a pretty good source for what they were thinking about in terms of the UI.
Mike | November 3, 2006 @ 11:47 am
Philip: thanks for the back story. That’s very interesting and jibes with my gut-level understanding (and peripheral acquaintance with) what happened at General Magic. Io think it’s a testament to how easy it is to map prevalent successful assumptions from one field to another, where they’re not nearly as successful.
Grant: my presentation was about magic as a metaphor for device UI, which is why all of the pictures of devices are in there. ;-)
BTW, you can pick up working Magic Link–and its sequel, the DataRover–units on Ebay for cheap.