It's All About The Interface, Or Is It?
Interface design has always been a fascinating domain to me. Perhaps it's my roots doing graphic design or my latter day fetish for writing interactive code, but I've known for some time that regardless of what the backend does, if it fails to work for the user, everything's pretty close to useless.
We're in changing times now, and the term interface is evolving as well. Though we've traditionally associated it with the "look and feel" of the application, we're also seeing it reach out into new areas. In particular, the development of new APIs for public consumption are largely entering the interface landscape.
Interface design, of course, is a function of the audience. It seems this point is lost quite often by most people. On the other hand, the most common way interfaces are built takes this to the extreme - designed for the audience of one, the developer herself. In reality, any interface needs to be useful to the primary audience and then to others (that's just a rule of thumb, not a hard and fast one).
Although I recognize the need for a good interface, many thing the pursuit of that particular nirvana is useless. I've seen a few posts lately on blogs I frequent that deal with interface from different sides of the wall. Let's take a look:
Peter Caputa recently quoted a post on this matter. The post pretty much concludes that VCs only care about the market size and if the business will scale. I'll be the first to admit those things matter, to a VC. I'll also note that venture capital, on a whole, is a business about misses, not successes. VCs invest in multiple companies hoping one of them will succeed and cover their losses on the others. Are those the right people to evaluate how important the interface is?
The original post, found here, makes reference to sites like Google and EBay. Naturally, I would counter that interface played a critical role in the success of both entities. They perfectly matched the needs of their audience. The fact is, though they were simplistic, they suited the audience perfectly. In Google's case, they rocked the boat by shedding all the baggage competitors at the time had.
Moving past specific examples, however, it's important to also consider how often something "ugly" really "makes it". Though the premise is tasty from a marketing point of view (for the post), the reality is that most companies invest in their interface for a reason. Following the lines of Seth Godin, we might come to say that the interface tells a story about the company and its relationship to its customers, its attention to detail, its abiliy to service me.
Then there's the whole Web 2.0 thing that's flipping the pyramid. I can't remember why I found the Bokardo blog, but I truly enjoy it. A post today brought me to write this post. As the site notes, the movement is in the direction of the interface:
In Web 2.0, your interface is your product. It is not something bolted on, added later, or done as an afterthought. Increasingly, it is a key differentiator that people will use to evaluate and decide whether or not to continue coming back for what you have to offer. It is the frontier of design innovation.
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This will continue to be the case in Web 2.0, which is all about public access to loads of information. The key word there is “public”. When developers can get their hands on another’s data via an API, their main task becomes not accessing the information but innovating the interface to that information. Because everyone else has the same access, the playing field is levelled on one axis, but opens up on another. The new axis of innovation: the interface.
Why do people love the Apple but use PCs, both are computers? Why do people prefer Google Maps over Yahoo! Maps, both give you directions? Why do people adorn Flickr, doesn't it really just store photos?
The answer should be obvious, the interface.