Lachlan Hardy said: The implications I see are that as gaming becomes more and more mainstream (which is pretty hard to argue with in Western society, I'd say, but feel free to shoot me down), more children are going to retain these skills into adulthood. This would mean that the potential for interfaces to become more complex and more individual will increase in future
That's certainly true but I think the issue streches farther than that, because most people in their late 40s and 50s weren't exposed to many kinds of technological UI until late in life; it's not a natural part of their experience. Whereas younger people have grown up with UIs and technology much more from an early age, whether they are gamers or not. People tend to stick with what they know - and what they know happens. So if young people nowadays know that technology changes every few months, they'll continue to be used to adapting to that change. Thinking about my parents, they never used Teletext, never operated a video recorded or microwave, and certainly never used a computer until they were in their 30s. I find it immensely encouraging that middle-aged and older people engage with technology in the way they do. The "silver surfer" phenomenon is good for everyone. Is it Guy Kawasaki who keeps warning that the business world will change when the MySpace generation hits the workforce in a few years time? Maybe that's when... Patrick H. Lauke said: Do we go completely off at a tangent, using the web browser as a mere generic container for ANY kind of innovative, new, non-standard interaction model (aeh...like most flash sites), or should we look at different user agents which do not come with preconceived and/or traditional interaction models? Things like widgets or similar web enabled applets/docklets/etc... completely new UAs with their own interface paradigms... ...Patrick's vision of a "Minority Report" style world will happen :0) People generally only push the barriers when they've exhausted, or become bored, with the barriers they've already got. Of course, the problem with puching boundaries from a UI point of view is that we will a) step outside of the standards we are trying hard to promote and b) make the mistakes of the late 90s Flash sites: "mystery meat" navigation etc. Who knows, as these new user agents are developed (and it's not a long way off, web browsing on the mobile phone is coming of age) there may be a whole new set of interface paradigms, as Patrick said. There's a whole world just waiting to be discovered! Lachlan Hunt said: I don't know of any usability studies, but as a user, this is my opinion of click here links. They create an unnecessary separation between the link and the description of the content which only serves to slow the user down. I agree absolutely. Fortunately the marketing department at my work is generally accepting of copy amendments I make. Here's a couple of recent examples: [Click here] to read more -> [Click here to read more] (obviously) Our product list is available to download, [click here] -> [Click here to download our product list] For more information on subscribing, [click here] -> If you don't know what subscribing means, [find out all about it here] Keep it up guys, this is really interesting! Chris ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
