Much has been written about how Science Fiction movies and books are the harbingers or future technology. Authors Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel acknowledge this impact, too, by focusing on what these stories tell us about interaction design.
Although I’m excited to read their book, I have to wait a while. The book is due out in 2012. However, it was introduced at MacWorld last month:
“Make It So” was introduced at MacWorld 2011
In their planned book Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons From Science Fiction, Shedroff and Noessel intend to glean practical lessons from the many interfaces depicted in science fiction television shows and movies. They take a perspective that the production designers of these entertainment projects are empowered to develop “blue-sky” systems that require some consideration of how humans (or aliens) interact with these fictional devices. This can translate to real work insights about the design of mobile, online or other pervasive interfaces. “SciFi is a design tool like any other,” they argue. “All design is already fiction, until it gets built.”
The MacWorld talk covers the introductory content they plan for the first chapter, including defining their area of concern, how the real world and science fiction inspire each other, and comparing timelines of technology advancement in both worlds. They narrow the focus down to interaction design culled from 3D and live-action, screen-based science fiction. To begin, they catalogued and tagged 10,000 images from science fiction shows fitting this definition to generate a tag cloud that described the entire corpus of interactive artifacts. The biggest term was “glow.” The best insights, though, came from the interweaving timeline showing how these two worlds—real and fictional—work together to advance design. “The real world establishes the paradigm that science fiction then extends,” explains Shedroff. (The video is well worth an hour of your time, btw.)
Noessel is a Director at Cooper, designing for a variety of domains that include museums, health, and counter-terrorism. A pioneer in experience design, Sherdroff is chairing the Design Strategy MBA program at CCA, aimed at applying design to business practices. Through their publisher (Rosenfeld Media), the authors will be blogging their progress as they write their new book.