A transcript of Episode 216 of UX Podcast. In this classic episode, Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel, authors of Make It So, join James and Per to talk about interaction design lessons from science fiction.
This transcript has been machine generated.
Transcript
James Royal-Lawson:
Before we start, we’re just going to say up front. Thank you for listening. If this episode, or us podcast in general gives you joy, then please visit UX podcast.com slash support. And say thank you by giving us a one off donation, or a repeating donation from just a few dollars a month, to hundreds of kronor.
Per Axbom:
And by funding UX podcast together with James and myself, we can hopefully bring you eight more years of an independently curated UX podcast. Thank you for being wonderful
Computer voice:
UX podcast, Episode 216.
[Music]
Per Axbom:
Hello, I’m Per Axbom.
James Royal-Lawson:
And I’m James Royal-Lawson.
Per Axbom:
And this is UX podcast. We’re in Stockholm, Sweden, you’re listening in 186 countries from Lithuania to Brazil.
James Royal-Lawson:
From time to time, we bring you a repeat show. This is an episode from our extensive back catalogue resurfacing some of the ideas and thoughts from the past that we believe are still relevant and well worth revisiting.
Per Axbom:
Today, we are reposting a show from October 2012. This is our interview with Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel when they have just released their book make it so.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson:
The book is make it so yep. And it’s written by Nathan and Chris well Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel.
Nathan Shedroff:
I think we’re just one entity now called Nathan and Chris. This was an idea I had back in – this is Nathan – 88 or 89. After some film I saw saw in which and had interfaces, but it’s an idea. And in fact, I you know, I came up with the title of the book back then too, but never did anything on it until about 96 I believe when I started talking to Chris about it. And he said, Yeah, right on this sounds like fun. And even back then we knew we had a feeling that there’d be something interesting in that kind of investigation, but we had no idea exactly what would you know, come out of it or that we would find so much material.
Christopher Noessel:
Quick, quick data, not 96 – 2006. Right, right?
Nathan Shedroff:
Oh, yeah, I’m sorry 2006.
Per Axbom:
I tend to make the same mistake. Yeah,
James Royal-Lawson:
no, I, you know, decades fly by now. So it’s a sign of our ages.
Christopher Noessel:
I was just gonna say like, it’s one one kind of nerd thing to have been done during the six years. Yeah,
James Royal-Lawson:
we will book the interview with you in 10 years time. So we can have the re-meetup and talk about it.
Per Axbom:
CO bit both been doing like, what will what we call it interaction design for a while now, like 20 years plus, and you both speak and teach all over the world? So I guess the common interest of the sci fi genre both made you want to do this. But yeah, I understand you also have to limit it. I mean, you have you thought you have the idea. And you had all these, this material, but you have to limit it like two movies, because there’s not a whole lot of books and stuff in the book. Movies.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, both movies and TV,
Per Axbom:
Movies and TV. Right?
Christopher Noessel:
when we when we recognise that the aspect of sci fi that we wanted to talk about was really the interfaces that sort of provide some some natural boundaries for what parts of sci fi we look at. In the book, chapter one, we go through a little bit about an interface that’s described from the time machine. And when you read it, it’s sort of sufficient for the narrative, but there’s no way you could actually evaluate it in tech. So we, we really couldn’t look at it in text. We couldn’t even look at it and like still pictures or like graphic novels, if only because the depictions like change over time. And that really left us with live action or 3d movies and television. Hmm.
James Royal-Lawson:
Yeah, you’re right, you, it gets too subjective, because you have to add too much. Detail yourself to the situation rather than I know.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah. And then you’re sort of like evaluating your own imagination and cares about that.
James Royal-Lawson:
It’s getting very anal here.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, like the sort of spin out of control. And the other thing was, like, even even just movies and TV, like, I don’t think even in six years, Nathan, we could have done it. We still had to even sort of choke in from that. And we first tried to find movies or television that were sort of most popular. And then that sort of drifted into things that people were telling us about, Oh, you’ve got to see this movie chrysalis or, or you’ve got to see this movie sleep dealer. But still, like we ended up having to refer to the survey a lot. So that we were careful about not saying, Oh, we don’t see the sci fi, because sci fi fans are a enthusiastic bunch. Yeah, they’re an eagle eyed bunch.
Nathan Shedroff:
Right. And so we, you know, we watched a lot of sci fi, I mean, our whole lives included. But certainly over the six years in this investigation, we’ve covered a lot of ground, there’s still a lot more to go, particularly with some British and in essence, just sort of everything non US. And we continue to watch the fight. You know, even now, we’re swapping files and screenshots back and forth, and write ups and they’re making more, you know, like, they won’t stop. So this is turning into sort of a never ending but happily so affair.
James Royal-Lawson:
Yeah, I actually saw Prometheus this last week. And because I’ve been reading the book, the last couple of weeks, so when when, when I was in the film, watching it, I’ve kind of constant looking at the interfaces and what’s been on screen. I’ve done my own linear analysis, so I’m a bit infected now. I think.
Nathan Shedroff:
Nice.
Christopher Noessel:
I have heard
Nathan Shedroff:
It’s working
James Royal-Lawson:
Ha exactly. World domination.
Christopher Noessel:
a friend of mine actually told me fairly recently that I have ruined sci-fi for him.
Per Axbom:
Yeah, that was gonna be one of my questions have been Can you enjoy it after this? But yeah,
James Royal-Lawson:
definitely a risk though. Yeah.
Nathan Shedroff:
I think so. I mean, you know, anyone that’s in any kind of technical fields, you know, must have been affected by, you know, poor narratives, whether it was a well designed interface, or whether it was ridiculous technology that could never be that breaks the laws of physics. I mean, that’s something that we’ve all had to suffer or ignore anyway. So I don’t think that this actually ruins interfaces, I think it might amp a level of humour that we didn’t necessarily have in mind when we see stuff. But I don’t, it hasn’t certainly hasn’t ruined cyphy. For me, it’s only made it more interesting.
Christopher Noessel:
And I think you always watch it movies or TV with just a threshold level of is this believable? And you know, sometimes it could be the the science involved, like what the hell, or it could be a characters actions, like, you know, they would never do that. And it just adds an additional layer that we’re looking at. And we’re saying, Well, you know, that doesn’t really map to that, or I see what you’re trying to do. But you know, and only in a couple of cases, is it so egregious that you know, I’m like, I can keep watching? Yeah,
James Royal-Lawson:
now this is actually something. I’ve written down in my notes here about the complex feedback loop that we’re talking about discussing in the book here that that’s sci fi, feeds us and sci fi, feeding itself. And at the same time, we’re feeding sci fi. I think it was an interesting bit you wrote, I think it was in chapter 13. When when you’re talking about Brainstorm and Strange Days, and that the the device in in Strange Days for viewing the the films such as they’ve got in the film is called a squid. And you say about how it was it was smaller than the one that was used in Brainstorm, because Brainstorms a film was produced 10 years before it.
So there was a interesting reference there to how you know, time real time moves on and our expectations are our boundaries of what we’re willing to accept as believable goes on and change their lives.
Per Axbom:
But but also in the real world, because in early on in the book, you talked about how buttons disappeared from the interfaces on the ships, because they were just too expensive. And so they have these flat layers. And now we haven’t have these flat layer screens all over the place, because we’re so influenced by by sci fi. And I’d like to see you isn’t there some some way like, you also talked about there’s there’s some sort of comfort in mechanical controls? And should we really, really shouldn’t be come back to mechanical controls, more and more and not be as influenced by sci fi as we are?
Nathan Shedroff:
Well, and it’s so a couple things. One is I have to note that the claim that the reason they went these flat panels is in dispute. Okay, we did get someone to write back to us to say it wasn’t budget at all, but I distinctly remember reading a comment about that, I think from Chris Okuda, who, who designed them, so I’m busy trying to track it down. But some things are not easy to find on the internet out surprising.
Christopher Noessel:
We just found out that Michael Okuda is on Facebook, so we’re like, trying to get him to friend us.
So we can have that chat.
Nathan Shedroff:
And so and he’s always been notoriously sort of tight lipped about the production of the Star Trek, you know, the the production design in that era of Star Trek. That said, and this is something we have, at the end of the second chapter on physical controls. Even in sci fi, we’re seeing a blending of sort of physical controls and, and virtual controls, whether they’re volumetric projections or touch screens. And it’s for a simple reason, I think, you know, we are human and our, you know, until our bodies go away, our hands are pretty good interface operation, you know, devices, and touch screens just don’t do very well, for everything. You know, there are some funny examples where they show up in their sort of uncharacteristically and out of place in sci fi, but for the most part, we’re now seeing a blending of controls, at least in sci fi. And I would assume, correspondingly, we’ll probably start seeing more of them in the real world,
James Royal-Lawson:
you give the, one the lessons was about using physical controls for fine control. And then there was the example of was it Will Riker in the Star Trek film where a silly joystick pops up, so you can fly the ship manually?
Nathan Shedroff:
Yeah, the other thing to say is that, you know, Chris, and I aren’t exactly of one mind on on some of these details, too. We do go back and forth, okay. sees that cnet’s fairly reasonable that you would have, you know, a manual control for something like that. And in general, I agree, I just think its place in the film, since we haven’t we didn’t, we don’t get to see it used for, you know, until the end, at this moment attention, when all the other, you know, weapons that have been used up till that point have been used, you know, using this touchscreen interface, and then all of a sudden, we pop up the manual control. The fact that the latest installation, the reboot, I think is much better about that, because you see physical controls used throughout the film, so it doesn’t sort of pop up in one place and then seem like an out of out of place joke, right?
Christopher Noessel:
Oh, yeah. But but they ended up spending all their sort of interface believability on this unbelievably complex, transparent screens everywhere. You see, like if you’ve gone through Starfleet supposedly are well trained. But yeah, they just kind of went beyond the pale for complexity. Yeah. But one of the things you guys had asked me original question was sort of about that loop of influence. And the patterns that Nathan and I had talked about during the course of the writing of the book, but never actually made it into the text of the book was called what you know, plus one, which is pretty much what especially blockbuster sci fi can afford to do, which is take the modern paradigms and extend them just a little bit.
So when we look back in like 1927, metropolis, it was, you know, the the big video phone interface up on the wall was pretty much pretty much what the audience knew, which was telephony plus film. Yeah, that’s what they could afford to do. But 10 years later, you get to Buck Rogers, and everyone’s got a TV or, or at least has seen one. And now they can no longer do that. So the new what you know, is TV, and plus one, in this case was big and on the wall. And that pattern still continues to this day, except there’s an interesting addition to it, which is what you know, now includes sci fi.
James Royal-Lawson:
Second, I was gonna add that well, you know, also also depends on how long the series or the film franchise have been running. We’re thinking again, about Star Star Trek, that there’s, there’s the Memory Alpha website, which is very similar to the old encyclopaedias that used to get where there’s entire websites and books explaining how things work in that universe, or in that particular, you know, programme. So as you as a viewer of it, your believability is that what a warp drive works in that way. And if it doesn’t work, how you’ve you’ve, you’ve learned over six series of next generation or something, then you feel cheated. Right?
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, the world has been broken.
James Royal-Lawson:
Yeah. Even though he’s not even a real world. Yeah.
Nathan Shedroff:
And that any fiction is like that, you know, whether it’s sci fi, or whether it’s fantasy, or in some extent, whether it’s a crime novel, you know, you can’t pierce the sphere of credibility, or else it all comes crashing down. But as long as you stay within it pretty consistently, we as audience members will accept a lot of really weird things. Really cool stuff.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah. They kind of think it’s like it, it drives some things to ridiculous ends. And they’re sort of fun anthropological moments, the universal translator in the film, I mean, I’m sorry, the TV show of Star Trek is one example. there’s a there’s a great scene in the episode of The 37’s from Voyager, where Jane was actually sort of telling these people that they’ve just woken up out of a status who’ve been there since 1937. And they include Amelia Earhart. They’re explaining to the Japanese man there. He’s like, hey, sounds like you guys are speaking Japanese. And they say, Oh, no, you sound like you’re speaking English. And she points to her com badge, of course. And she says, Oh, this is a universal translator. It lets us hear each other in, in our own languages, which is needed for the narrative. I get that. Yeah, I understand that it’s much more complicated to have that same narrative without it, except to try and work that out diabetic, like, make it make sense. And the universe just stretches your brain beyond all belief. I’m sure language translation is possible. We’ve got something akin to it now. But but we actually see him speaking English. Exactly. We see the lips move. Speaking English, and unless that com badge has some sort of like, 3d, you know, holographic masking capability. It’s just not happening.
Nathan Shedroff:
Well, to be fair, they were on the holodeck at the time. But yes
Christopher Noessel:
No, no, they were on a planet.
Nathan Shedroff:
I think was it on a ship?
a Star, a Congo hold?
Christopher Noessel:
know, they’re, they did a landing party down to the surface of a planet, which of course, was like in some sort of Nebula, so they couldn’t communicate out. And yeah, they’re down in this, like, ancient cavern where they’ve been kept for all these years. But we will re-watchi it.
James Royal-Lawson:
You guys need a database for this. You can get an answer. Yeah,
Christopher Noessel:
that’s a that’s actually awesome that you mentioned that just for the opportunity for the plug. We did actually build a giant database over the course of writing this book, because we had these moments. And The 37th wasn’t actually in that database, which is why Nathan are kind of like, wait, what was it? And but that was an internal database, one that I coded up and oh, my goodness, I’m not a coder. But we’re slowly revealing that database online at a website that we’ve got and would love to let your listeners know it’s at sci fi interfaces calm. And so far, we’ve only got Metropolis and Forbidden Planet up. But we have the entire beta database sort of scheduled to come online slowly. Nice. Yeah. So and that’s really for these exact questions where other people who are maybe taking up these questions or other different ones can hop into this database or, and see what they can see. Or even if they just want to say, hey, what have dials looked like over the course of science fiction and or, hey, show me what weapons how they have evolved over the course of sci fi.
James Royal-Lawson:
Yeah, exactly. Like it looks like a giant patent. Lovely. Yeah, exactly. I’m
Per Axbom:
sorry, I was going to go into one of your your chapters is about gestures. And I’m into this debunking myths, because you assert their that Tom Cruise who’d probably would never admit this, but he gets really tired from moving his arms and holding them above chest level when using this interface. And that’s, that’s really interesting, because that gesture interface and Minority Report is something that is referenced by and large by every interaction designer around the world. And as some everybody sees it, that’s the future. But we’re not actually testing it. And the way that you described there that people actually do get tired waving their arms around like that. And you have lots of good examples like that in the book, I think, where you actually put things in perspective and look at what would happen if we actually did that. Well, this and this would happen. And you do that you do that in a great way, with lots of example, actually.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, actually, just as a side note, I happened to hear John Underkoffler speak, when I was down at the Create tech conference about a month ago in Santa Monica. And he actually admits that on stage that he himself had Oh, and I should say that John Underkoffler is the fellow who created the original tech that you see in the film and actually has a company called Oblong Industries that is commercialising this technology for like boardrooms across the across the world. I mean, he actually acknowledges that holding your hands above your heart is pretty exhausting. But again, that’s sort of a narrative trope, it looked better to have his Tom Cruise’s hands up in the air. But you can actually use that. And especially, you know, in the, over a decade since that film, of course, the technology’s gotten better. And you can actually just lift your hands up to do it, and still manipulate the interface?
Per Axbom:
Well, no, it’s actually
Nathan Shedroff:
go ahead, say that’s an interesting point about this is that that’s not a futuristic interface. It’s got a futuristic wrapper around it, but it’s actually a working interface from, you know, his work at the MIT Media Lab, and he’s trying to sell it commercially, it just seems really, really futuristic. In the same way that we, you know, we all remember the geographic sort of spatial control system from the computers and Jurassic Park, which seemed really futuristic. And yet it was a shipping piece of software. If you had a Silicon Graphics workstation.
James Royal-Lawson:
That’s right. You mentioned a couple of these examples in the book that a lot of these films do actually use when there’s when, especially when they show command line interfaces, there’s a lot of is taken from real systems. Right? Well, I never had a question as well. But one thing that must mean, if it was tempting for you was, would it be to dive in so much stuff completely in the design process of a single film or series or, or even interface to, you know, to learn more about the process? The film and TV companies go through come to the internet is that they are I mean, obviously, a lot of production and, you know, things to do with how they want to look, but still must be fascinating to know exactly how much effort and work they put into researching?
Nathan Shedroff:
Yeah, it depends on the film, we’ve done a Chris mostly has interviewed a lot of production designers already. And that gives us some insight into the processes, I would still say that budget is a big constraint, whether it’s for the set production costs, or just the time to pay people. We’ve heard that, you know, in many cases, they just don’t have the time to delve in as deeply as they would want, because they need to hit a production schedule. And so they sort of user intuition
James Royal-Lawson:
Oh this sounds familiar?
Per Axbom:
Yeah. That’s any web project.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah. Yeah, we have one of our secret weapons in that regard, is a good friend of ours named Mark Kohler, and who did interfaces for The Island and the Jason Bourne series. And he actually left the sci fi world to come work on interfaces in the real world. Partially be cuz he was frustrated with, you know, having budgets and reasonable bosses. And, and I think he had something of a rude awakening when he came to the design world, because you know, we all deal with insane deadlines, and sometimes unreasonable bosses. But but it is very actually true that the constraints of the moviemaking business are our mighty, and really hard to overcome.
And it was actually one of the things that I kind of have my fingers crossed about the book, of course, our main audience was interface designers, folks who enjoy life and science fiction fans, of course, who want to use and think about this stuff in their real life. But the fact that we took time to really think through, say, communication, or really think through the phases of medicine, I hope is something that, you know, production designers in the business could say, Oh, hey, you know, we don’t need to think about this. We’ve already got some, some thought in the book. Yeah, but I haven’t heard heard that back yet. Because we’re not targeting those guys.
James Royal-Lawson:
No but I definitely noticed that there was a there’s a lot of production explanations in the book, and I can see how definitely will be useful for producers to, to kind of show up in some ways shortcut some of the conversations and meetings discussions about Yeah, how do we do that.
Nathan Shedroff:
And that’s not to say that some directors and producers don’t, you know, take this seriously and delve deeply. We know that destination moon, which is probably the first and then 2001, and even Minority Report, they had specific design sessions, or at least conceptual brainstorming sessions, where they brought in scientists and engineers and, and others designers to imagine a credible future. And so the, in fact, some of the sci fi that sort of holds up the best over time, even though it was made a long time ago, is the sci fi that has, you know, bothered to be serious about the project about, you know, the process of creating the future, or a vision for the future? That goes beyond just sort of window dressing.
Christopher Noessel:
There was a film that was made Nathan I’m hearing Yes, your memory as well. There was a film that was made right at the same time of destination moon and this is for if you’re if you’re not aware, it’s like a 1950s. Let’s Let’s all journey to the moon, you know, through the rockets, which was unheard of at the time. But there was another film made at the same time, but with next to zero concern about scientific rationality. And I mean, they end up walking on the surface of the moon without helmets. Do you remember the name of that film, Nathan?
Nathan Shedroff:
All of them?
Can’t think of that now. I mean, the one thing that comes to mind is this crazy film. And it was like nudists on the planet, on the moon or something like that, but in which they do all that as well. Oh, let me see if I can pull this out of my memory and out of my notes.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, I was gonna look for you. But anyway, but it was it was a really interesting comparison, because they were both made at the same time. So they have some of the same surface, you know, similarities, many of the interfaces sort of make homage to the same things. But when we look back on them, you know, 60 years on one of them is like, Hey, that was actually pretty good. You know, pretty smart. There’s like, one tension scene and destination moon, where the the core crisis is that the the astronaut is floating away from the spacecraft. And they’re like, figuring out how to get him back. which is you know, genuine and smart. And the the the scenes in this other movie are things like green bug eyed it, you know, monsters appearing from behind moon rocks. And it just like it’s, it’s was probably maybe more exciting at the time, but just fails to hold up in comparison. And these sorts of a the quaintness of these movies and of the interfaces within them, just doesn’t hold up as well, if they don’t put the thought into it.
Nathan Shedroff:
Yeah, Destination Moon was 1950. I’m thinking about a movie called Nude on the Moon from 1961.
Christopher Noessel:
What have you been watching!
James Royal-Lawson:
Say it like it is
Per Axbom:
that wasn’t part of that sex sex chapter actually.
Nathan Shedroff:
You’re not sure which one you’re referring to. But it would be around 1950. Chris?
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna look it up as we keep talking. And I’ll pop up later with Oh, my god, it was this.
James Royal-Lawson:
Yeah, you can send it to me, and I’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Nathan Shedroff:
Okay.
James Royal-Lawson:
Okay.
Per Axbom:
But But how would you expect us as interaction designers? Oh, what type of feedback have you been getting from people reading the book on how they’re using the book and their day job?
Christopher Noessel:
Wow, have you heard any Nathan? I like, it’s so it’s so new that I have not yet.
Nathan Shedroff:
I mean, it’s only been out two weeks. So we have we’ve heard a lot of excited excitement and you know, sort of gratitude that this book is out and etc. I don’t think we’ve heard of anyone yet saying, Oh, I can’t you know, this is this is how it changed my work. On now I will say that we’ve been giving workshops around the book for about six months. Now I’m doing one tomorrow, actually here in New York, right, where it’s interesting to see the kinds of development that people go through with the exercises that we give them, and it does push them into a space they probably never would have gone to before, but then they have to sort of bring that back to the reality of technology and their bosses or their clients. So we don’t know how those exercises have you know what they’ve become,
James Royal-Lawson:
I’m sorry, I’m gonna, I’m gonna stick my neck out and say, I wonder if the book in itself is more of a discussion starter. And then it’s gonna be a whole load of things that you can talk about after reading the book. So the book itself might not be a tool for for your work, but what you talk around it
Per Axbom:
It’s like an artefact for starting discussions, yeah, I actually have an example of things that popped into my mind reading back to Minority Report, there’s, you have the example of someone walking in and to greet Tom Cruise in that scene. And he, when he stretches out his hand, of course, he moves something on the screen. So the system sort of recognise the intent. And you talked about there’s a child in another movie bagging on a phone, that’s, that should actually make that make the phone call in but it doesn’t so but you make make something out of that. And it could actually be the intent that it’s not supposed to shut down the call.
But also, what I thought when I read that was like, I work a lot with web forms. And a big problem I see with web forms is that the error handling is really bad, as it always is. But an obvious thing is when people actually hit the send button, before filling out any field at all. And it’s so obviously not their intent to send it, but you scream errors in their face for all different form fields that you have on there. But I’ll be you should say, just say, Sorry, you forgot you presentable. Something like that. So so I’m seeing ways of using these as fun examples for the people when I do talks. For example, when I’m trying to explain things to clients. Think about this in the real world. Think about how this affects how you how you how we designed the website today. And even the scene of the thing. The scene with the we have Darth Vader.
James Royal-Lawson:
Talking to the Stormtrooper.
Per Axbom:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And when Darth Vader is really small, yeah. And talking up to the Stormtrooper, yeah, I’m thinking, Okay, so the tonality of my website? Is it talking up or down to the user?
Christopher Noessel:
Well, that’s cool. That’s a that’s an abstraction. We didn’t even pull out from it. But it makes a lot of sense. And one of the things that we I don’t actually think this term ended up in the book, but it’s one that I gave when I spoke in the Netherlands fairly recently, is that, um, sci fi is this sort of lingua franca of future interactions, where we can say, what’s the gestural in face? Well, you know, it’s like the Minority Report interface. And even though there are like, dozens of interfaces in there, that’s the one that people know that you’re talking about.
Or if I want to talk about sort of a gunner seat interface, I can just say, you know, like, Luke Skywalker in the in the basement of the Millennium Falcon. And that is actually something that we have, and kind of the real world can certainly capture current paradigms. But when you want to talk about something new and cool, and you want to push the boundaries of your own work, the place you can turn to is science fiction. And if we just like use them as they are without sort of taking a critical eye to them, I think we’re actually going to do ourselves a disservice, because they’re not perfect. They’re there for narrative purposes. Yeah. Not for design reasons.
Per Axbom:
Exactly. Yeah.
When you were talking about anthropomorphism, the human like interfaces. I was I was thinking about the old search engine. Would you probably remember, ask Jeeves. They asked simple questions, phrasing them ask questions, and it returned answers in the way that answer I presented and like that, and really humanised that the search experience, which I haven’t seen after that actually, either, and he hadn’t even over that basket. He was still online.
Nathan Shedroff:
I believe it is.
called ask.com now.
Per Axbom:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right now, they go.
Christopher Noessel:
Oh, they lost Jeeves aw. They fired him.
James Royal-Lawson:
They retired him. Yeah.
Nathan Shedroff:
Well, they’re probably off in search engine, you know, warehouse somewhere.
Christopher Noessel:
Actually, we ought to write a piece of sci fi about what Jeeves and Mrs [indiscernible] doing.
Maybe they hooked up.
James Royal-Lawson:
In version two in revision two of the book, you can add that to chapter 13 without sex.
Nathan Shedroff:
They create Bob and Clippy who then go back in time and create them.
James Royal-Lawson:
Still on the chapter 13 things again. So you can mention Clippy when I’ve kind of sex thoughts in my head.
Nathan Shedroff:
You don’t want to find out about the reality that that you know, sex bots are actually going to be more like Clippy then like, you know,
because they’ll be running some version of like Windows 13.
Or sex bots.
Per Axbom:
One thing I also wanted to ask you about is that I do a lot of talks around quantified self today. And I actually haven’t seen any reference so quantified self. Yeah, well, I mean, I have this Fitbit tracker, I have my we think scale that can actually register to everything because it tweet my weight, but it doesn’t currently. But all this data that we’re collecting about ourselves, I’ve haven’t actually seen reference to that in any sci fi movies, or I didn’t think about reading the book either. Let all this data your that. I mean, it seems like a strange behaviour human. James is waving his hand.
James Royal-Lawson:
I was just going to prove that I’ve read more of the book than you. Because I was there is a mention. And you guys can help me out here because you wrote it, when you talk, talking about using data to extrapolate, in turn or more to predict things more using the data you’ve got. And you do into that one point in the in the book.
Nathan Shedroff:
Yeah, you know, I think there’s a lot of things that we found out that we find or didn’t find in science fiction that strike us as great opportunities for science fiction to expound on and one of those things are, you know, personal scale sensor networks, they don’t really show up except for a scene in the original Star Trek where a character Ambassador comes on board. And she’s got this sort of beautiful dress that turns out to be a sensor network that allows her to see since she’s blind, and they don’t find that out until the you know, near the end of the the episode.
And that’s really one of the the only instances that we see of this kind of personal sensor network, even though it’s in a very different genre. And for use, then what we see as you know, Fitbit and quantified self at the same time, we see very little use of networks, and the kind of network at applications and uses that we use today. So there are big blind spots and sci-fi..
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, and in fact, we see sort of tropes all the time that shut down communication for narrative purposes. Like the Battlestar Galactica, you know, they had actually a really good digested reason as to why they shouldn’t be using network communications. But it’s partially a constraint of what storeys we can tell when everyone knows everything. We’re just not good at those storeys yet. And I think as time goes on, and, you know, a younger generation sort of grows up expecting to know everything that the storeys that they begin to tell will be a little bit different. Um, but I did think of actually another another giant thing that never appears in sci fi that we noticed is volume control. Yeah. Volume is always perfect in movies and TV.
There’s only I know, there’s only one example that I can think of. And of course, I haven’t seen all the sci fi but it’s only in contact when she’s actually turning that mechanical dial in order to listen closer to the sounds of space. But it just goes to show sort of like the quantified self. And the network example that sci fi as a narrative genre has certain things that it affords to use an interaction design term. And that that doesn’t cover all of our work. It is incomplete as a textbook. It’s a very big textbook. But ultimately, we do have to add to it with our with our own knowledge and domain expertise.
Per Axbom:
Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think we have to start thinking about wrapping up your time here.
James Royal-Lawson:
Actually one thing we mentioned before we, when we were getting the kit set up here, was me and Per realised that we could probably talk about this for days. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We actually joked that if we couldn’t get hold of you on Skype, then we could do the interview anyway, because we were babbling so much about scenes for various films and things in the book and so on.
Christopher Noessel:
No, actually,
Nathan Shedroff:
I remember very vividly when we first gave this talk at at SXSW, about three or four years ago now. As the talk had ended, and the lights were coming up, and people are getting out of their chairs, Chris turned to me and said, You know what, I just realised like this can’t really go wrong. Yeah, no, they do is is sit in the dark and watch clips from their favourite sci fi films, they’re going to be happy. It’s kind of true.
Christopher Noessel:
kind of a gimme thing.
But actually, one of the things that was great about that very talk is that Annalee Newitz, Newitz is the editor of the fantastic sci fi blog, IO9 happened to be in the audience, actually, along with Bruce Sterling, who ended up writing our forward. But Emily got up to the microphone, and she said, I want to let you guys know that I fully expected you to fail. And of course, this being our first presentation, my heart completely sank. I was like, what’s going on? And she said,
Oh, no, because that oh, maybe you’re right, because that was the time we went to go talk about sex. Sex one. Yes,
Per Axbom:
You have a sex only talk?
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, yeah.
And charmingly, that was the year that my dad came to South by Southwest. Oh, well. Yeah. So here’s, here’s the audience for that one. But she said, I fully expected you to fail. And of course, my heart sank. And then she followed it up, I, it would have been very easy to simply get up and show us moments from science fiction. And she said that would not have added anything. We’ve seen those films. But what she complimented on is particularly on the sex chapter, but I’m going to extrapolate the rest of the book, he said that we’ve added a layer of analysis. And of course, the lessons that do make it use that we have added something to this material, and moved it forward as a conversation, and not just simply been fanboys. And that to me was sort of the biggest stamp of approval that yes, we have added something and we’re not just watching sci fi, using it to.
James Royal-Lawson:
you know, you’ve joined some dots that are not being joined before.
Christopher Noessel:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Per Axbom:
So do we have any final questions for you?
James Royal-Lawson:
You’re looking at me now. I think I’m done.
Per Axbom:
Yeah. I have one obvious one going then. So what’s the best sci fi movie?
Nathan Shedroff:
What there’s no such thing, right? I mean, there are a lot of fantastic. Did you watch bro? Yeah,
Christopher Noessel:
yeah, like, cut. Yeah, there’s so like, there’s so many ways to cut that question. Like, do you mean, which one can we return to repeatedly? or which one has certainly the best interest based on the surface or the best interfaces after sort of analysis? Yeah, that’s a real tough one.
Nathan Shedroff:
Actually, there’s a T shirt. I saw Burning Man this year that probably applies here. And the shirt basically said next year’s burn was better.
Yet to Come, right. Like we have all these hopes for the second instalment of the Star Trek reboot. And, you know, what? Is it cloud heaven? Or what’s the new one by the Lebrowskis? Oh, no, I thought earlier, you know, there’s all sorts of great sci fi still still to come. And I think that they have the opportunity to, to best in some ways, everything that’s come before.
James Royal-Lawson:
I like that this is a great note to finish on. So yeah.
Nathan Shedroff:
Cloud Atlas. That’s the film coming out.
20 in 15 days in the US
James Royal-Lawson:
Cloud Atlas
Per Axbom:
Ah nice.
Christopher Noessel:
Okay. Not even heard of that. But I’ll be in a cinema.
Per Axbom:
Thanks so much for doing this, guys. It’s been loads of fun.
Christopher Noessel:
Thanks to you.
Nathan Shedroff:
Yeah. Feeding our obsession.
James Royal-Lawson:
Thanks for letting us
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson:
Well, that was fun.
Per Axbom:
Yeah, it was actually
James Royal-Lawson:
We could have talked for years.
Per Axbom:
We’ll keep talking.
James Royal-Lawson:
We do usually.
Per Axbom:
But I think I actually will be looking at sci fi movies very differently. From now on, I will be thinking more and more about the interfaces, because I’m not usually that bothered when I when I see them do it wrong. But now it’ll be more looking at how they actually do it and why they might have done it like
James Royal-Lawson:
Exactly. I know from seeing, as I said about this last week that Yeah, I’m already been a little bit critical. I’ve got a critical eye now on interfaces that I didn’t have before the book.
Per Axbom:
And it’s just fun introducing a new perspective. And I mean, looking at interaction design from a whole different side of things that may I’ve never looked at it this way before. And just doing that makes you think in different ways. And that’s one of the fun things about working in this area, is that there are no right answers to it.
James Royal-Lawson:
It’s all about believability. I guess
Per Axbom:
that’s a very good way of putting it actually. Nice.
James Royal-Lawson:
Links related to this episode are on UX podcast.com and we’ll also send them out as part of our backstage email, which you can sign up for by visiting us podcast.com slash backstage.
Per Axbom:
This podcast has been a repeat show from our archives. Let us know which of your favourite episodes over the years you think should be repeated for more people to listen to
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson:
See you on the other side.
[Music]
Per Axbom:
Did you hear about the two antennas that got married?
James Royal-Lawson:
No?
Per Axbom:
Yeah, the wedding was lousy but the reception was outstanding.
[Laughter]
[Music]
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel originally recorded in October 2012 and published as Episode 25 and 216 of UX Podcast.
This transcript has been machine generated.