(2022-11-02) Ui Design As Normal Science

J. Joseph Miller: UI Design as Normal Science. The desktop GUI has shaped the way we think about human-computer interactions for the better part of 40 years. That may be changing.

So I’ve been re-reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

I’m also struck by the parallels between Kuhn’s framework for understanding science and the history of human-computer interface design—the discipline more commonly known today as UI/UX design.

While we normally think of UX/UI work as design rather than science, there are some interesting parallels nonetheless. Howard Rheingold’s Tools for Thought outlines three distinct computer interface paradigms

Punch Cards

Time Sharing

Desktop GUI

Pretty much all UI design since 1984 has been the work of normal science

On the web, we’ve replaced nested folders with hierarchal menus. Pages with unique URLs stand in for files

Consider how much of usability or tree testing is aimed at ensuring that users can find things. But the entire notion of finding things on a website presupposes a graphical representations of things that get accessed by way of traversing a set of hierarchies. We conduct usability tests because we have graphical user interfaces that are grounded in a desktop metaphor.

The Next UI Paradigm Shift

We’re starting to see some entirely new metaphors emerge. A few examples:
The infinite canvas popularized by Notion
Bidirectional links and none link diagrams seen in Roam Research, Obsidian and Logseq
Active reading apps like LiquidText
AI-assisted searching in tools like DEVONthink
Live app embedding from desktop GUI stalwarts like Microsoft (Loop) and Google (smart chips)

These are metaphors that, as Raghav Agrawal notes above, “basically invent new social practices” that are inherently digital—they have no real analogue in the desktop GUI paradigm.