Is LCARS a pratical interface?
- Thread starter ZeNd
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It's already happening.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
I have LCARS computers in my house and use them every day, for word processing, games, and as a full-screen digital clock, but not for Internet connection, because of modem driver issues.
Here's a screenshot gallery of my working LCARS system:
http://lcars24.com/screenie.html
Here's a screenshot gallery of my working LCARS system:
http://lcars24.com/screenie.html
G
Garrovick
Guest
So, where did you get all your touch screen hardware devices?
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It's touch screen but it doesn't look anything like LCARS. It reminds me more of the touch-screen interfaces from "Minority Report."
No touchscreen, no mouse, just keyboard control. This system is for old, otherwise useless, laptops. Since there have been over 130,000 downloads, there are quite a few people using it, which wouldn't be possible if it required any special hardware that's hard to come by. I don't even have any touchscreen monitors. And how many laptops have touchscreen, anyway?
So it is different from the LCARS on Trek is that respect, but it works, and some people actually use it, and it at least demonstrates that the LCARS paradigm is workable as a practical interface, which is the question asked by this thread. And with better hardware support by manufacturers, a larger LCARS system could be build to do much more.
How exactly does this system discern an intentional finger touch from an accidental hit?
That's the one flaw I've always seen in Star Trek
That's the one flaw I've always seen in Star Trek
Plecostomus
Commodore
And I want to know how it manages to not go apeshit when Commander Riker sits on it.
If you touch a button on an LCARS panel currently active for input, the system checks for any simultaneous touch outside the defined area of that button and accepts input if touch is only within that small defined area. If you sit on a panel, slap it to break a fall, or get thrown against it, the system will not accept that as user input. Riker explained that in at least one episode.
LCARS practical? Hell no.
A computing interface exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: To give the user the ability to do tasks. Each individual program adds to that; for it give the user the ability to do a task and do it easy, do it quickly and do it well. For that to happen, it needs to follow certain rules that have been discovered since the inception of the first GUI.
For example: Usability. People need to use an electronic device with as little knowledge as possible. The person shouldn't react to the software, rather the way around: The user should be able to intuitively do something, and the software should understand what the user wants. Because there's always going to be a translation-phase of some kind, the software needs to offer information in a clear and concise way and to guide the user on it's path. As such, you need symbols, icons. You need whitespace. The interface itself should take a backseat to the content.
LCARS fails horribly. As an interface for computers on a TV series, it works very well; it has a lot of bright colors and little substance, so viewers don't read the text and get distracted when the plot doesn't need it. But as an actual interface it has a multitude of shortcomings; the list is really much to long for this post.
One example is Space. In an interface, space it at a premium. Even non-used space is actually used -- as whitespace, to make the other elements clearer. LCARS has lots of space (for example, the colored bars) that doesn't actually do anything, but isn't whitespace either -- it's dead space. It holds no information, yet intrudes on the content. Another thing is usability. LCARS has no symbols or icons -- the most important method of conveying as much information as fast as possible. The colors are much too flamboyant -- the actual content gets pushed back, while in actuality, it should get pushed forward. There are lots of other important points it lacks.
In sort, LCARS is usable for nothing but those displays on the set. There are a multitude of LCARS programs on the internet, but all have the same problems -- they're not usable at all. It simply doesn't have the usability, adaptability and abilities of modern, real interface systems. And it never will. Not unless you strip out anything that make it recognizable as LCARS, and design a completely different system from the ground up.
On another note: I always assumed that in the series, they actually had keyboards if they needed to enter information -- you just don't see them. They can be a touchscreen, as long as they're reconfigured for alphanummeric input and have some form of tactile feedback. It's a logical assumption, since a touchscreen interface can never get the information-throughput a system with a keyboard has. Try texting on a touchscreen, for example, it will always go slower then using real buttons. Voice-commands don't cut it also, no matter how good the interpretation software is; you'll type a lot faster then you can speak. Someone experienced with programming can attest to that. Me typing this post definitely took a lot less time then if I were to actually say the words.
A computing interface exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: To give the user the ability to do tasks. Each individual program adds to that; for it give the user the ability to do a task and do it easy, do it quickly and do it well. For that to happen, it needs to follow certain rules that have been discovered since the inception of the first GUI.
For example: Usability. People need to use an electronic device with as little knowledge as possible. The person shouldn't react to the software, rather the way around: The user should be able to intuitively do something, and the software should understand what the user wants. Because there's always going to be a translation-phase of some kind, the software needs to offer information in a clear and concise way and to guide the user on it's path. As such, you need symbols, icons. You need whitespace. The interface itself should take a backseat to the content.
LCARS fails horribly. As an interface for computers on a TV series, it works very well; it has a lot of bright colors and little substance, so viewers don't read the text and get distracted when the plot doesn't need it. But as an actual interface it has a multitude of shortcomings; the list is really much to long for this post.
One example is Space. In an interface, space it at a premium. Even non-used space is actually used -- as whitespace, to make the other elements clearer. LCARS has lots of space (for example, the colored bars) that doesn't actually do anything, but isn't whitespace either -- it's dead space. It holds no information, yet intrudes on the content. Another thing is usability. LCARS has no symbols or icons -- the most important method of conveying as much information as fast as possible. The colors are much too flamboyant -- the actual content gets pushed back, while in actuality, it should get pushed forward. There are lots of other important points it lacks.
In sort, LCARS is usable for nothing but those displays on the set. There are a multitude of LCARS programs on the internet, but all have the same problems -- they're not usable at all. It simply doesn't have the usability, adaptability and abilities of modern, real interface systems. And it never will. Not unless you strip out anything that make it recognizable as LCARS, and design a completely different system from the ground up.
On another note: I always assumed that in the series, they actually had keyboards if they needed to enter information -- you just don't see them. They can be a touchscreen, as long as they're reconfigured for alphanummeric input and have some form of tactile feedback. It's a logical assumption, since a touchscreen interface can never get the information-throughput a system with a keyboard has. Try texting on a touchscreen, for example, it will always go slower then using real buttons. Voice-commands don't cut it also, no matter how good the interpretation software is; you'll type a lot faster then you can speak. Someone experienced with programming can attest to that. Me typing this post definitely took a lot less time then if I were to actually say the words.
G
Garrovick
Guest
My 300 dollar Aspire One Netbook has an after market touch screen available....
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/index.php?sid=564a59c3d02cb3a20d5ff57b07d4daa2
Yeah, some do. If I get my hands on one, I'll implement touchscreen. But most users put my system on throwaway computers. So not many would benefit from that capability, although it would be nice to be able to say it's there, besides being able to use it myself.
I sit on my iPhone all the time. If my iPhone can tell the difference between me trying to use it, and it brushing up against something foreign, then I'm pretty sure that a computer interface 300 years in the future will be able to too.
Seems to be a fairly basic and easy to understand menu based interface. That's pretty much as practical as you can get. Certainly no less practical than using hyper links to navigate the Web, or using the GUI of just about any incarnation of Windows or the Mac OSs.
The only impracticality that I can see is the possibility of having to navigate through too many layers of menu before reaching the application you desire, which could easily be avoided with a few additional drop-downs / scroll-able menus.
I was thinking about this watching Voyager one night. If the hardware was table size, which it is ( a small table). What I was wondering would be if the surface was divided up into discrete screens physically or if it was programmed in to change each time a new set of screens popped up.
The physically discrete screens have one advantage: the user knows that this screen will contain A, this area B, and so on. As a rough example, bringing up weapons, the left screen is targeting, the right screen is firing. If it was set to communications, the left screen chooses mode (intraship, intership, broadcast, etc) and the right screen the signal to be sent, a bunch of preprepared codes. If it was damage reports, the left screen would be where on the ship the system's referring to, the right lists the damage. And so on. And I'm only using 2 screens, there could be as many as 8, and a skilled, practised operator could make that work very fast, when you consider how fast computers really are, and how a practised typist can sometimes type faster than they can speak. The comment about menus and layers is true, which is what started me thinking of discrete screens rather than something that changes with each change of menu option. I think that would be a viable option.
Mind you, now... imagine LCARS on a Microsoft Surface PC.
We're nearly there.
The physically discrete screens have one advantage: the user knows that this screen will contain A, this area B, and so on. As a rough example, bringing up weapons, the left screen is targeting, the right screen is firing. If it was set to communications, the left screen chooses mode (intraship, intership, broadcast, etc) and the right screen the signal to be sent, a bunch of preprepared codes. If it was damage reports, the left screen would be where on the ship the system's referring to, the right lists the damage. And so on. And I'm only using 2 screens, there could be as many as 8, and a skilled, practised operator could make that work very fast, when you consider how fast computers really are, and how a practised typist can sometimes type faster than they can speak. The comment about menus and layers is true, which is what started me thinking of discrete screens rather than something that changes with each change of menu option. I think that would be a viable option.
Mind you, now... imagine LCARS on a Microsoft Surface PC.
We're nearly there.
We're talking about LCARS in the real world, today, right? And not on specialized systems either; if LCARS is really a viable interface concept, it has to be able to display and do everything other common GUI's can do.
Try to imagine a Photoshop, for example, or anything other then simple Notepad in an LCARS form -- you'd have nowhere to put the actions you'd do through the menus, toolbars, action palettes -- all these informational and interactive elements that you need can't be put anywhere in an LCARS system. That, and you can't really see your thing you're working on -- a lot of space is taken up by unnecassery blocks of color, that also distract you from your work.
Perhaps it could only work for very specialized systems, and only for people who have the luxury of taking time to read every button and message.
I am quite interested in computer interface design. I think lcars gives us ideas and things to think about.
I think what appeals to some people about lcars is the simplicity of its design, like a button being a simple coloured box.
Also, an absence of fine graphical detail such as icons, means that you understand the display when you're not close to the screen. So it's an interface that feels more suitable for remote access.. like you feel comfortable seeing it and interacting with it from a distance.
The gui looks as though it would be incredibly quick to render since the controls are not animated, they have no 3D effects, and no transparency. There are no windows as everything runs full screen, so eliminating window occlusion and desktop clutter.
For good or bad, there is some temptation and motivation to strip away irrelevancy.
But as argued previously, if we remove something (eg, icons) from our GUI, then we need to replace their functionality with something superior otherwise we can end up with an interface that is clunky and hard to navigate.
I think what appeals to some people about lcars is the simplicity of its design, like a button being a simple coloured box.
Also, an absence of fine graphical detail such as icons, means that you understand the display when you're not close to the screen. So it's an interface that feels more suitable for remote access.. like you feel comfortable seeing it and interacting with it from a distance.
The gui looks as though it would be incredibly quick to render since the controls are not animated, they have no 3D effects, and no transparency. There are no windows as everything runs full screen, so eliminating window occlusion and desktop clutter.
For good or bad, there is some temptation and motivation to strip away irrelevancy.
But as argued previously, if we remove something (eg, icons) from our GUI, then we need to replace their functionality with something superior otherwise we can end up with an interface that is clunky and hard to navigate.
I can see the appeal, also. And let's face it; for a interface on a show, it hits all the right marks -- it usually sucks when you catch yourself trying to read the text (or look at the icons) on a screen in a TV show, when you're supposed to watch the scene.
Good point. Thought about it two ways.
One, LCARS as we see it on the teev is for running a complex, multi system vessel, not for sending emails or prettying up your face. As Jadzia implies, it's a quick interface for a fast moving system. LCARS could have a right now real world application in things like cruise ships or power stations, to mention nothing of the military. Or, to put it another way, no matter how juiced up it is, you can't run a ship using a keyboard and a mouse, no matter what the game makers tell you.
Two, things like Photoshop or Notepad could run in a virtual window, either with a foldaway or touchscreen keyboard.
