Recently I came across this talk from Scott Jenson where he raised a point I’ve been feeling for a long time but couldn’t quite put into words: we are stuck using mostly the same metaphors since 1984.

Perspective

The main idea is that we have lost the ability to actually innovate and do interesting designs and experiences. He’s absolutely right when he says that the most “exiting” thing to happen in Operating System (OS) design is Apple’s liquid glass. That’s actually a reskin of the same metaphors and way of doing things.

Large companies don’t want to alienate their users; designers usually go for the “the user is familiar with this”; etc. This is where Scott divides this into 4 quadrants: Could; Should; Might; Don’t. This idea comes from the book Could Should Might Don’t by Nick Foster. Scott expands on the idea and equates them to a persona.

He argues that a conflict exists between should and might are keeping us from doing good things.

The Desktop metaphor

In this presentation Scott gives a few examples on how we can start reconsidering our approach and we can investigate new metaphors for the next 40 years. On of the examples is this desktop metaphor where there is a notion of “spaces” and files, copied content and windows are treated the same way.

This takes me way back back to the glorious years of Windows Longhorn prototypes, leaked builds and some innovative ideas. Back then some of the concepts made the sidebar the main interaction metaphor for our day-to-day tasks.

Some of the concepts that Scott talked about were considered by the magnificent Windows Design team with Hillel Cooperman and Jenny Lam. But almost none of those ideas never survived the big “reset”.

One other interesting video shown at the PDC 03 conference matches Scott’s point about the ideas and not just the icons.

It got me inspired

This talk was so good that it got me inspired to write this article. I’d like to also give it a shot at expanding on Scott’s metaphor idea and making it more functionally polished. However it should come at no surprise that life is always in the way of us completing these side projects. 😅 No promises.