Embrace UI: Adam Argyle at TEDxTacoma

so I'm here to convince you to embrace UI because it has never been easier to learn you why as you see in the picture here this is a free way many UI is that you you know explore and test out like your shoelaces or things like that are not scary this one is scary my grandma my great grandma let me qualify that she never got on the freeway because she refused to merge merging freaked her out and that's understandable I feel like merging is scary driving next to a semi-truck scares me a lot you know those are scary interfaces you had to learn to read the signs you had to follow the path stay between the lines many of the same rules that apply to the software in any sort of interface so here's some 1930s interface this is everybody on there humongous iPad you know and look at that you know we complain about this but they're doing it there and it was normal then you know and I think that this is okay they're connecting this is their means of connecting with their city with their country with whatever and you know they're sitting next to another human but they might not know them anyway I just think that was really interesting this is from the movie Road to Perdition here's another interface this is a trail we've all gone on a hike it starts with a little sign that says this way you know there's an arrow that points you somewhere and then you see a trail you follow the trail because your goal is to get to successful viewpoints where you get optimized or optimal view of the entire sort of wherever you're headed you know the mountain or what and I just wanted to point out that a trail is an interface that someone created for you a teapot is an interface you had to learn how to use it this one is cool because it's also beautiful and it's really interesting when places like Bauhaus and these really artistic design places made functional things beautiful and I find that really really elegant like you know Steve Jobs he was all about that too it's functional and elegant I'm not a huge I phone fanatic you could call but he does make gorgeous things right they they're functional and they feel good they look good and I think that's really important that interfaces are no longer these sort of old clunky things they're now elegance and reduced into the bare minimum that gives you exactly what you need I call this a transparent interface because you all get in your car you turn it on the same thing as starting an app so when you start your car it rumbles and you smell it if you drive a 70s Firebird like I did you know like these things become part of the experience of that interface that's a big steel interface and it even has interfaces inside of it where like your passenger gets in any straps himself in and he adjusts the vents or something right these are all interfaces inside of interfaces these were not scary but they took a learning and you know that's okay so a lot of people talk about the cloud and I want to talk about the cloud because technology is so rad that this is the cloud if you're wondering what happens to your file when you shoot it up to a satellite and it goes into Antarctica iceberg it's hitting a Google server room probably like this they keep them in ice because they get really hot all your files are going in and out of them all day you know it makes sense but that's the cloud so your cloud is a physical space so if you're wondering where's all my media where's all my stuff go it's still somewhere that you can get to and I want to talk about Google and just really quick I mean Google's an incredible thing I could do a whole speech on how cool Google is you know because I'm a nerd but it's really cool to note that Google automatically updates when you visit there and you hit a search for something and you want the most relevant information it is always the most relevant information 20 years ago and I wanted to go get some information about I don't know some historical topic I to go grab an encyclopedia Britannica's something that was printed at a year now if the information changes I have to go get the newer version and it cost me money now what's really cool about Google is it doesn't cost me any money and I get information it's the newest all the time and I want to point out too that the Tesla car that's coming out that's very controversial because it's replacing a lot of hardware with software and by replacing hardware was software in your car you get automatic updates imagine if your carburetor could update itself you're now on v2 right it's not more effective more efficient anyway just wanted to throw that out there so modern UI so modern UI okay so we went through all these phases UI like this one here hopefully you guys recognize this AOL Instant Messenger or just AOL Mail in general this was really cool though because you felt connected when you logged on and it said you've got mail and you're like that was the most exciting thing that's ever happened my computer like I've got mail how cool is that but look at the interface they've thrown everything in front of you it's like they thought it was easier if you could see every button at all times and what we've learned is that well here let me go down to modern mail modern mail is an entire reduction all you knows Who am I writing to do I want to take a picture and send it in the message mind-blown who would have thought that you could just snap one and send it I mean now we have snapchat it's like I could I could send you all right now it's my friends and my family now and they get it and I think that's really cool and I love that interfaces have gone away with all of the chrome or all of these things that are irrelevant to the things that you need and all of these points I'm getting at is that interfaces are easier than they've ever been Steve Jobs had a concept for the ipad called skeuomorphism where he said I want to make sock I want to make interfaces just like the ones you use in real world so that they're more familiar like your calendar the calendar in the iPad is a leather-bound top when we turn a page you can see the page curl like he thought that that was going to bridge the gap between why people are sort of not taking on more iPads and we see iPads getting more popular now because software and interface is getting much better but I love his concept of scheme orphism try to make software as much to real-life as you can and it ended up being really limiting so it didn't quite make it and I want to talk about guided tours and this is the new user manual when you bought a VCR you've got a DVD player back in the day would it come with a big fat manual and six languages or whatever you never read it because it was confusing it was like technical talk why I can't read this stuff I can hardly read that stuff it's boring it sucks and now you open up an app and it's like hey welcome to the app let me take you through the features that I have for you you know and this one is called okie and it's a journal for your child's life so you've got I mean people journals or child's life all the time but now if you do it digitally you can share it wherever you are and this one's cool because it opens up and it says here's how you take a picture and here's how you write about you know your child and the moments and here's how the diary works and these things are just really cool that the manual is built-in to the products just kind of nifty and I'm kind of cool too here I'm using my iPhone to drive my presentation mm-hmm actually it's all because I needed it down arrow and all they had was left and right so then I want to point out this it's true I have a weird presentation it's two-dimensional so this is a calendar and it costs a dollar and a lot of us look at apps were like $0.99 mean you know but in reality that's a dollar and how much does your normal calendar cost and you had to buy it again and again and you can't any of the rewrite everybody's birthday you know like so things that you have like this that you're refusing to sort of you know join into your life I highly encourage you to get them because you enter in a birthday once and it repeats and you can send out a reminder so that hey 7 days before that thing reminded because I tend to forget you know I think that's really important that this cost a dollar and some of us refuse to buy them you know that's really interesting and it's even better I mean it's better than a hundred ways and that's another speech I don't want to get into so now there's apps so a lot of times apps get a bad rap like they're taking us out of reality and heat such an amazing job introducing lively lively was built on a few like really core concepts but one of them was that have you ever gone to a show that you left and you were like man I really want to copy that show and that's what lively does lively captures it audio and video you go home and you get the copy of it like you were in the front row so that you can be in the back and not smell the sweaty dudes and go home and rewatch it on your big-screen TV you know cast it from your phone to the screen and watch it in high res it's super incredible and we also saw that a lot of people at were you know looking at the show through their phone capturing pictures and video and then the person behind you is like I can't see through your phone we're like we need to solve that that sucks you know artists don't like it so anyway there's apps that are encouraging connections so that you're in the moment there's things that apps can't replace like your five senses and here's one of my most favorite applications that connects people and this is Kickstarter I guess you can't really see the the logo up there and if you haven't heard a Kickstarter you really need to go check it out it's basically people saying here's my idea and in order for me to launch this idea I need X amount of money and if you all can help me reach this amount of money I'll give you some sort of value out of the products maybe you either get an early version or I give you credit but you help me fund my own invention and I I love this site because I get to go help other inventors other idea people create stuff for like 2 bucks you know and then you see things like this like the wireless smart headphones these are Bluetooth enabled earbuds that are waterproof they do all sorts of crazy stuff and look at he was like I only need two hundred and sixty thousand dollars and he's a 2 million he might have gone to uh you know some bigwigs and had a bunch of money for funding and they turned him down because I didn't like the idea and he said okay wait no this is a good idea I'll take it a Kickstarter kids two million bucks and now he's got a really great product I think that's incredible these are some of my favorite products are the ones that I get to help start and then this is this is what's cool all this technology all this stuff is like coming into this moment now where you're no longer just connecting with your friends and your family and your peers instantly you know in video chat we've all been kind getting adjusted to that now this is this is to 2014 this is gonna be the year of smart things this is one of the most exciting things for me and especially on Kickstarter the phones are getting so small Wireless stuff is getting so small that now your air freshener or your air purifier in your home can now connect to your phone and tell you what's the humidity you can check it from home you can change its speed from home right these things are just really cool eggs go bad and they tell you on your phone what's really do you think that's funny there's diapers you don't like to smell a baby divert me neither there's a little patch you can put on little send you a message hey your baby pooped never smell a diaper again that guy is solving a good problem smart Karzai I have this one I Drive to work and I Drive home I do all these things and it keeps track of how long my trip was how many miles it took kid tells me gas mileage if I get in a wreck and I can hurt this thing automatically calls family members really cool technology it'll even tell someone when I arrive at my destination you know I'm driving 18 hours I get home I forget to call my mom that will tell her for me then there's social social smart things like this little wristband I have this thing makes being Fitness with your friends like fun and cool like I get to go see how active my developer buddies are you can imagine we're very active so my wife she's here somewhere she's like you know way up on the charts running every day and then there's me sitting in my chair and I'm like 300 steps you know like whoo I'll get there later anyway this is really cool that like a little wristband can make taking steps social and fun just blows my mind so and I want to get to this this point which is you know no one really likes clutter around the home nobody likes a hoarder you know that's a really fun to watch hoarders you're like look that hoarder oh but we all hoard we hoard one thing or another and I want to be a proponent of hoarding in the cloud you know take all your stuff and take anything that has really nice meeting to you or have all these books all these things all those books fit in a phone now you know um let's see I think there's a nice little picture here yeah I hope this guy knows that all this stuff fits in his pocket now you know like it's true you've got a wall of but you could do anything with that wall because all that stuff on the wall fits in your phone now free up space in your life free up space with other people by hoarding in the cloud I encourage you just take more pictures take more video to stick in the cloud stick it in those Google server form farms that's what they're there for and so what's my take away what's the take away from the speech it's not that like technology super cool you guys know that it's not that you know embrace you why is very much the overarching thing I'm trying to communicate but really it's that modern technology is incredible and interfaces are not new to humans right we saw the newspaper we saw trails we saw all these things I've been getting invented since the first tool stuff on paper is dead data and I mean that by like your calendar on your fridge is only viewable by the people next to your fridge you know the the photo album that you have at home next to your couch is only available to the people sitting next to you in the couch but if you make these things digital they follow you wherever you go and you can share them at any time it's more convenient right you find yourself in a little downtime somewhere hey let's go through the photo album I have like that stuff's really powerful that the things you write on paper stay where you wrote them at the end I want to encourage you to get rid of some of this dead data and make things more shareable and more and connect with other people the calendar one is really cool for me because I love inviting friends to events because then I know they know what time it starts you know if they're late I'm like dude I sent you the event and you said yes what the heck anyway set things once with modern replacements you only have to write a you know calendar reminder once a birthday once a to to do reminder once like a grocery list is a really good example a lot of things you you know you go to the grocery store you buy the same things many times you don't have to crumple up that paper and throw it away every time if you make it digital you just cross it off and then when you're done uncross them for the next time you go back be smart about the way that you can use some of these things and the 2014 you know the year of smart connected things I'm really excited to see all the new stuff that comes out not the more baby diapers but there's like incredible smart things entering your home and there's smart locks there's smart smoke detectors there's anyway there's smart everything and I'm really excited about that because it kind of puts it all here this is like the central unit for all of these smart things remove clutter clutter and hoard in the cloud you know I think that one's pretty obvious video chat more often because that is just incredible imagine 10 years ago I'm at a video chat with you in there no way you can't do that now all of a sudden it's here through our phone I can like video chat this whole thing I think that's really incredible to do that more often you actually you can connect with people in other states instantly through video you can see each other smile it's way better than phone anyway and let technology give you more time with people because it really is a lot of these things these people are making these technology these are making the software so that you have more time to be a human and that's where one of the really big takeaways that I have for this is that data and media is cheap and fast we know this because it goes to space and it goes to an iceberg and goes back to space into my phone and before I can blink my eye right so if data is so fast and data so cheap and all these things are getting smart what's important empathy is uncreated all our phones and all these smart things will never replace the humans in us the way that we can empathize and listen and feel for things those algorithms Welch I'll try to make them they are insanely difficult and will not happen for a very long time so don't be scared that technology is going to take over any sort of emotional connection you have with people that is uncreated and that is my speech

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 8,910

Rating: 4.7073169 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talks, ted x, ted, TEDx, Design, Technology, tedx, User Interface (Ontology Instance), ted talks, English, tedx talk, United States, TEDxTacoma 2014, ted talk, TEDxTacoma

Id: odt_C6vaFmI

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 26 2014