Recently I was loaned the entire original Star Trek series. Given the short 45-50 minute episode length, it made perfect late night brainless entertainment and this was the first time I’ve actually sat down and watched the show as an adult. It was a really good show and certainly relaxing to watch Kirk, Bones, and Spock get out of some impossible predicament with nothing more than a few well placed judo chops and Vulcan logic.
However, after nearly every episode I found myself realizing we have really, and I mean really, come a long way in user interfaces. To Gene Rodenberrys’ credit the show was created roughly between 1966 to 1969, and their understanding of where computers would go was fairly limited. Despite this, I’m continually amazed how they can operate an entire star ship on nothing more than random blinking lights and loosely grouped buttons, none of which have any labels on them whatsoever. No wonder you spend half your life at the Federation academy, it’s because you need to memorize that blink, blink, whiirrr means your turning portside, and blink whirrr whirrr means you just roasted a god-like alien being with plasma torpedos. Can you imagine user testing that thing? You’d be lucky to escape the testing room with your life much less any decent information.
Not only do the buttons and dials not have any labels, they apparently do multiple things at the same time. On a number of occasions the discerning viewer can catch Kirk hailing the bridge with one button, then later using that same button to send a homemade matter / anti-matter bomb down the gullet of an enemy ship. Now that’s efficiency. Just think what you want the button to do, and then press.
The most astonishing interface has to be Bones’ medi-corder. Given any dire medical situation, all you have to do is wave what looks like a semi-clear automobile cigarette lighter over the body and get a full diagnosis. Somehow this device is able to communicate that the individual has three broken ribs, internal bleeding, high cholesterol and acute halitosis…without any view screen what-so-ever. Just hold it over the body and it somehow works. All this incredible capability and it’s still smaller than the communicators.
Hopefully a real starship interface will be a little more like Minority Report and a little less like Fisher Price. The point here is if ever you find yourself with design block and you just can’t seem to nail down a decent UI design, just think back to the Enterprise and know your work is at least more usable than a 23rd century starship.
Published on February 10, 2006
Resides in User Experience, Design
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One Response to “Life Goal #47: Watch every Star Trek Episode ever made”
1
Matthew Anderson on February 13th, 2006
Although, I remember reading somewhere that Motorolla’s original inspiration when creating the flip phone was Star Trek’s Communicator. So, while Star Trek was lacking in interface design, I guess it made up for it in pop culture trends
Great post! Insightful enough that I may have to go back and watch some episodes myself.
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