The content is the interface

Sam Moreau, User Experience Director at Microsoft. Just one small example.

Had a few questions about this so thought I’d add another simple example. Imagine you want to change your phone number on a service. Rather than display the phone number and have an option in a menu to edit and then a separate edit screen, the phone number itself can be the route to editing. You simply display the current number - clean, no junk. Mousing over it or clicking on it allows you to edit it directly. You remove the need for additional menus, text, instructions, and chrome. The content itself becomes the interface.

Published 26 Jan 2014

A weekly sketch by email

Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Sketchplanations in a book! I think you'll love Big Ideas Little Pictures

Prefer to listen?
Try the podcast

Like Sketchplanations?
Support me on Patreon

Keep exploring

The Writer's in the Writing. The Artist's in the Art.

Pillars of hope

Why do leaves change colour in fall and Autumn and what compounds make the colours?

Autumn leaves and the compounds that cause their colours

Gestalt principles

The best writing is re-writing

The magic of open-air kitchens for Asian street food shown calling out each aspect that makes it such an ingenious set up

The open-air kitchen

Every creation is a mirror, reflecting something of its creator. If you and I were to paint the same subject, your painting would reflect some of you, and mine would reflect some of me. If we both write stories, each one will carry something of ourselves—our personality, our experiences. The writer is in the writing. The artist is in the art. The musician's in the music. Take writing as an example. If we're writing authentically, we can't help but share a bit of ourselves in our work. Our past experiences affect what we notice. Our timidity or confidence is reflected in the tone and style. Our education in the choice of words. Our kindness and patience, or cynicism and frustration, is revealed to the reader. And the choice of what you write or paint reflects you. Not if we're trying too hard. Not if we're writing to sound like a writer or if we're adopting a "literary" style because we think that's how it should be done. And not if we focus more on pleasing a search engine or ticking off marketing goals than connecting with readers. But if we write honestly and directly, the writer shows through. The Third Dimension This phrasing hit me while reading Brenda Ueland's book If You Want to Write. She calls the writer the Third Dimension. I believe she means that when you read a book, there are the characters, the reader, and also, inescapably, the writer's personality. She writes that readers can tell when writing isn't authentic, when it's not really you, but instead, a performance to meet someone else's expectations of how one should write—or perhaps a creation of an AI's sycophantic personality. The presence of the writer in the writing, or the artist in the art, leads Ueland to say, "…I have come to think the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person." I believe this principle also holds true across other creative disciplines, though I thought "the cook is in the cooking" didn't quite have the same ring. Still, it holds a ring of truth if I consider a musician and their music, an entrepreneur and their business, a podcaster and their podcast and others. It's hard to write this without wondering what I'm sharing about myself (and what gets scrubbed out and cleansed by Grammarly proofreading). In Sketchplanations as a project, I've come to think that sooner or later, everything I know of value will be there. So, in some way, the whole thing reflects me. Shall we go for a beer? Also see: How to speak plainly The first draft is always perfect The best writing is re-writing Short words are best Micro-editing redundant words Everyone's a geek about something Happy talk must die More sketches about writing — it always surprises me, for a designer and product developer, how many I have. 35 at last count. Here are images for each alone in case you're more one than the other: The writer's in the writing - solo The artist's in the art In addition to prints of this sketch, I added an individual print of the writer's in the writing and an individual print of the artist's in the art.…Every creation is a mirror, reflecting something of its creator. If you and I were to paint the same subject, your painting would reflect some of you, and mine would reflect some of me. If we both write stories, each one will carry something of ourselves—our personality, our experiences. The writer is in the writing. The artist is in the art. The musician's in the music. Take writing as an example. If we're writing authentically, we can't help but share a bit of ourselves in our work. Our past experiences affect what we notice. Our timidity or confidence is reflected in the tone and style. Our education in the choice of words. Our kindness and patience, or cynicism and frustration, is revealed to the reader. And the choice of what you write or paint reflects you. Not if we're trying too hard. Not if we're writing to sound like a writer or if we're adopting a "literary" style because we think that's how it should be done. And not if we focus more on pleasing a search engine or ticking off marketing goals than connecting with readers. But if we write honestly and directly, the writer shows through. The Third Dimension This phrasing hit me while reading Brenda Ueland's book If You Want to Write. She calls the writer the Third Dimension. I believe she means that when you read a book, there are the characters, the reader, and also, inescapably, the writer's personality. She writes that readers can tell when writing isn't authentic, when it's not really you, but instead, a performance to meet someone else's expectations of how one should write—or perhaps a creation of an AI's sycophantic personality. The presence of the writer in the writing, or the artist in the art, leads Ueland to say, "…I have come to think the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person." I believe this principle also holds true across other creative disciplines, though I thought "the cook is in the cooking" didn't quite have the same ring. Still, it holds a ring of truth if I consider a musician and their music, an entrepreneur and their business, a podcaster and their podcast and others. It's hard to write this without wondering what I'm sharing about myself (and what gets scrubbed out and cleansed by Grammarly proofreading). In Sketchplanations as a project, I've come to think that sooner or later, everything I know of value will be there. So, in some way, the whole thing reflects me. Shall we go for a beer? Also see: How to speak plainly The first draft is always perfect The best writing is re-writing Short words are best Micro-editing redundant words Everyone's a geek about something Happy talk must die More sketches about writing — it always surprises me, for a designer and product developer, how many I have. 35 at last count. Here are images for each alone in case you're more one than the other: The writer's in the writing - solo The artist's in the art In addition to prints of this sketch, I added an individual print of the writer's in the writing and an individual print of the artist's in the art.

Newer

RRandom

Older