Interface: Using Icons to Assimilate

Effective interface is paramount to the success of any media of communication. Without a means for intuitive user interaction, consumers will not accept a new mechanism of content delivery. Those responsible for creating new media of communication constantly strive for a more appealing, rationally organized and universally acceptable interface. The reason for this effort is two-fold: (a) to ensure the use, and thus success, of a new technology and (b) to assist the end-user in managing the onslaught of information, an inevitable side effect of newly emerging technologies. Given these precepts, an examination follows, detailing how one of the newest and most popular emerging technologies, the network computer, accomplishes the aforementioned tasks through a presentation of icons, or graphical symbols, to represent and organize complex information or activities.

One doubtless driving motivator of inventors of the telephone was to surpass the interface limitations of the reigning telegraph. The same can be said for the advancement from radio to television. A similar progression has occurred with computers, especially in regard to their accessing the Internet. However, the advancement in interface for personal computers has exploded exponentially. What took print, the telegraph and radio many years to reach has transpired and surpassed ten-fold in the computer industry. Even considering this amazing adaptation, personal computing and "Internetworking" is still in its infancy.

In assuming a Zen-like perspective beyond the obvious intervention of modern information delivery: where a newspaper acts as a newspaper, a book as a book, television as television, etc., let us recognize the core goal of any media of communication: to deliver content to the end-user. The means by which to do this is constantly changing through improvement and upgrade, but the intent remains the same. With the evolving rollout of media of communication, new forms of information delivery constantly clamor to place their content in the hands of the public ever more easily. Computers and the Internet are no exception and have seemingly leapt to the foreground as agents of information delivery. However, with their relatively new introduction into society, they suffer a severe learning curve. Most people know how to pick up a telephone and dial a number. Most can operate a television set or retrieve a newspaper to see the latest headlines. Computers present a novel way to do these things, foreign in nature to the average user. To be successful, programmers and manufacturers of computers had to quickly adapt to the public to which they were trying to sell.

A relatively recent technique of organization and information delivery in the computer industry, known as Graphical User Interface, or GUI, is an attempt to render the deluge of necessary but often confusing commands and interface complications down to symbolic representation, easy enough for young children or illiterates to execute. The progression from command-line based operating systems (eg. DOS, UNIX) to current Windows and Macintosh desktops is the result of this attempt to accommodate. Less than a decade ago, Xerox PARC labs created the first completely icon-based computer interface, the Macintosh operating system, as an answer for those discouraged with the text input necessary to operate early computers. Through the use of graphical, symbolic icons, dozens of tasks are accomplished by simply clicking on a familiar-looking symbol. Other computer software companies followed suit, most notably Microsoft with its Windows operating platform.

Popularization of the Internet has encouraged an even faster restructuring of interface in order to deliver information to end-users. Less than four years ago, prior to the advent of the inherently multimedia-based World Wide Web protocol, retrieving a single file from Microsoft’s site would require the following typed text commands:

The current alternative is a grand improvement in interface:

In the model above, a user is simply required to type the site address (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com) and click on the picture or name of dirmap.txt to retrieve it. Although this still requires some typing effort from the user, obvious strides have been made to eradicate complication in interface.

Both the text-input and icon-based modes of interaction accomplish the same task. However, the latter is much more intuitive, thus successfully delivering content to a wider audience. This type of interface "polishing" is the single biggest reason for the explosion of participation and growth on the Internet. Software manufacturers have recognized the tendencies of humans to respond to graphical representations of commands. Eliminating the need to type has delivered content to a much greater section of the public. Pointing and clicking through a Graphical User Interface can be accomplished by nearly anyone, regardless of literacy. Even though GUI is a seemingly late-breaking application in navigation and content consumption, it is still considered immature and refinement continues.

Compared to the development timeframes of other media of communication, Graphical User Interface is in its earliest stages of development. Relative to the inception, advent and refinement of the printing press, photography, telegraph/telephone, moving picture and ultimately television, GUI has barely taken the first few steps in a long journey, with its presence spanning roughly only 10 years. Given this, what is the next step in interface design? What can be done to improve the latter example of retrieving files? The use of icons moves the medium of network computer-based communication from digital to analogue form. At the same time, this presents an issue with dictation of response. An emotional reaction is invoked when presented with a picture of a file. Reading a description or, moreover, the content of the entire file itself, creates an entirely different, typically intellectual response. The ultimately delivery of content might be a combination of symbolic forms, creating a hybrid of presentational and propositional structures.

Progress is being made to concentrate as much information into a single icon as possible. As previously stated, icons alone are graphical, presenting information in analogue form. However, if multiple symbolic forms of communication could be squeezed into a single icon, it would serve the purpose for a more universal crowd: young, old, illiterate, computer savvy, computer ignorant, blind persons, etc., by presenting information simultaneously in an analogue and digital form. By touching an icon (picture, analogue), words would appear (text, digital). Additionally, opportunity exists for a sound, moving picture, or combination of both to be heard and seen, explaining the content as well. This is multimedia in its purest form. In a sense, this combination could be considered a return to "primitive" communication. An early example of seamless, multimedia interface can be found in Galileo’s description of the first telescopic observations of Saturn, pointed out by interface guru Edward Tuft ("Envisioning Interfaces"): "In the text itself, as if it were a word, is a picture of Saturn and its rings. The integration is seamless. "So 'real soon now,' we'll be able to do what Galileo did in 1613."

As the past tells us, new forms of media constantly affected accessibility, making content available to those privy and able to decode the forms of communication. Content access, and not the content itself, is a greater concern in information delivery. This is especially true in regard to the Internet, which bombards end-users with information in various modes of delivery. As it delivers its wondrous abundance of content and content types, the Internet brings with it the headache of sifting through this massive amount of information. Were it presented in a single, text-based format, hardly any end-user would be able to make use of it. The potential exists to accumulate nearly all data created by man. This will be no small feat, but reckons nothing compared to the exercise of realistic utilization. Masters of interface, not information, will be truly challenged and victorious as they present tools by which users can plausibly digest the new media of communication.

Guterman, Jerry. "Envisioning Interfaces." Wired Aug. 1994: 61.