What direction is the user interface heading in?

It's been a while since my last post, and I promise to follow-up on my previously loose-ended entries eventually! I've recently completed a major project in Flex, and for the most part, the application has been taken to well by our client-base. I'm moving my efforts over to the WPF side of things now. Switching my head from Flex's markup and scripting to Microsoft's offering has been a bit of a nightmare, but also one hell of a learning experience. It'll be interesting to compare these two later.

Today's Topic

Anyway, the purpose of today's post is about something else. With the advent of these two new technologies (Adobe Flex/AIR and Microsoft's Silverlight and WPF), has come the first wave of experimental applications. I've been testing a few Adobe AIR demos and I've noticed one very significant thing.

Never before has any programming API allowed such flexibility and ease and above all, creative freedom when designing user interfaces. WPF's vector engine and AIR's CSS styling engine has allowed our desktop applications to act like the web, by that I mean the developer can make them look like whatever they want, and development time is quick. Very quick.

Indeed this is a major benefit, flexible designs allow richer interfaces, they are more interactive, more dynamic. Usability is increased, we can now display data in ways that have never been imagined in the past, there's much more visual feedback, and well, you have to admit, it all looks pretty sexy.

So what's the problem?

There is also a fundamental design problem that has never before occured in the past, but will completely free and open-ended interface designs hinder the end-user at all? This is an issue that in my opinion we will all have to think about soon. AIR/WPF has given not only the developer, but the corporation complete freedom over how your future applications will look. Every single new application will be branded by the selling company, in their company colours, complete with custom skins, widgets, buttons etc... I'm guessing what we'll see in the next few years, is that every application on your computer will not only look completely different, but will feel and act different as well.

The applications will all be based on the developer's and company's own interpretation of user-interface best practices. It's happening already. Upon installing the first few AIR demos, I can already notice the difference:

The Ebay desktop application. Complete with its own horrific colour scheme. Doesn't look anything like my nice Mac theme, does it?

Adobe Air lets the developer create their own window borders and titlebars. It's real nice looking, but where's the minimize button?

Rectangular windows? Thing of the past, keep up with the times! You can have it any shape you want. Cool. So what happens when you want to tile your windows on the desktop for some multitasking? And which bit do you click on to drag the window? The Kuler logo at the top? Nope, that takes you to the website. Ouch!

Ok, not all applications are like that, and of course it depends on the developer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not inherently criticising the above applications, in my opinion they are generally well designed, but it is in the same way that your average website is nicely designed. On it's own, they're great, but the user's desktop does not work like that. It all needs to be coherent and consistent, and above all, predictable. Compared to the programming API's of the past, it's much easier to make totally crazy interfaces, but it's also much easier to make mistakes. There's good reasons why things like the Apple Human Interface Guidelines exist...

All the Mac applications look, feel and act the same, and in a predictable fashion. Doesn't mean that OSX Leopard isn't drop-dead gorgeous though, does it?

Conclusion?
We should go the way of the Mac and have standards to follow, so all of our applications are nicely consistent of each other, and yet we still retain the benefits of interactivity and rich interface options given to us by AIR and WPF.

Or, eventually these technologies just won't catch on, and we'll be back with Windows Forms. I seriously hope it won't be the latter. Something to think about!