YOUR FEEDBACK
Ubuntu Here We Come! - Java Finally To Become 100% Open Source
Reader wrote: Since November 206, wow! that is a long process.
SOA World Conference
Virtualization Conference
$200 Savings Expire May 16, 2008... – Register Today!

2007 West
GOLD SPONSORS:
Active Endpoints
Your SOA Needs BPEL for Orchestration
BEA
Virtualized SOA: Adaptive Infrastructure for Demanding Applications
Nexaweb
Overcoming Bandwidth Challenges with Nexaweb
TIBCO
What is Service Virtualization?
SILVER SPONSORS:
WSO2
Using Web Services Technologies and FOSS Solutions
Click For 2007 East
Event Webcasts

2008 East
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
Appcelerator
Think Fast: Accelerate AJAX Development with Appcelerator
GOLD SPONSORS:
DreamFace Interactive
The Ultimate Framework for Creating Personalized Web 2.0 Mashups
ICEsoft
AJAX and Social Computing for the Enterprise
Kaazing
Enterprise Comet: Real–Time, Real–Time, or Real–Time Web 2.0?
Nexaweb
Now Playing: Desktop Apps in the Browser!
Sun
jMaki as an AJAX Mashup Framework
POWER PANELS:
The Business Value
of RIAs
What Lies Beyond AJAX?
KEYNOTES:
Douglas Crockford
Can We Fix the Web?
Anthony Franco
2008: The Year of the RIA
Click For 2007 Event Webcasts

SYS-CON.TV
TOP THREE LINKS YOU MUST CLICK ON


The "Uncanny Valley" Theory Doesn't Apply to Desktop UI
Creating Look & Feel That Transcends the Desktop Operating System

Digg This!

Page 1 of 2   next page »

If you design an application that runs on Windows but doesn't look exactly like Windows, so the old argument goes, the effect will be unsettling for users. But sticking to the native look and feel (L&F) should not be the end-goal of designers.

In May of 2007 Bill Higgins penned a thought provoking blog post called, “the Uncanny Valley of user interface design.”  His assertion was that any UI that tries to emulate a modern Windows look and feel (L&F) but is not exactly the same as the native operating systems L&F (i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux), will be unsettling to developers. He refers to this as the “Uncanny Valley.” 

The Uncanny Valley is a theory proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, that says that people’s impression of robots grows more empathetic as robots become more human looking – but only to a point. There is a point at which the designers make the robot look almost human, but not quite. Humans find this less-than-perfect emulation unsettling and are thus put off by the robot.



Figure 1: The Uncanny Valley

The theory sounds pretty good. It certainly applies to anything that tries to look perfectly human but misses the mark. For example, the characters in the computer animated feature fill “The Polar Express” are often touted as an example of the “Uncanny Valley” because they were so close to looking real they were unsettling. This is also true of the characters in the more recent animated feature, “Beowulf”, which I thought were very weird looking and emotionally flat compared to real life actors. (See graphic on next page...)

 
This column appears exclusively at SYS-CON.com. Copyright © 2008 Richard Monson-Haefel.
(This copyright notice supersedes the one auto-generated at the foot of this page.)


Page 1 of 2   next page »

About Richard Monson-Haefel
Richard Monson-Haefel, an award-winning author and technical analyst, is currently VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.

BEA WEBLOGIC LATEST STORIES
Microsoft To Keynote 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo
Mike Neil is general manager for virtualization strategy in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft. Mike is focused on the delivery of the Windows virtualization technology, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server and Virtual PC 2007. Mike also directs the tec
3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo: Themes & Topics
From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown
Virtualization Meets DaaS - Desktop-as-a-Service
After a $1.5 million angel round, Desktone, which was started in 2006 by Eric Pulier, who also started SOA Software, US Interactive and IVT, picked up $17 million in first-round funding about a year ago from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital, Citrix Systems and the China-base
Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use
The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys li
Web 2.0 Is Fundamentally About Empowering People
'Unlocking content to be remixed into new business value' is the driver of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, says Rod Smith, IBM VP of Emerging Internet Technologies, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan on the occasion of IBM's release of a new technology created by IBM researchers, code
Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?
Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along w
SUBSCRIBE TO THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL NEWSLETTERS
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEEDS & GET YOUR SYS-CON NEWS LIVE!
Click to Add our RSS Feeds to the Service of Your Choice:
Google Reader or Homepage Add to My Yahoo! Subscribe with Bloglines Subscribe in NewsGator Online
myFeedster Add to My AOL Subscribe in Rojo Add 'Hugg' to Newsburst from CNET News.com Kinja Digest View Additional SYS-CON Feeds
Publish Your Article! Please send it to editorial(at)sys-con.com!

Advertise on this site! Contact advertising(at)sys-con.com! 201 802-3021

SYS-CON FEATURED WHITEPAPERS

ADS BY GOOGLE
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE WIRES
AmberPoint Extends SOA Governance to Apache ServiceMix, BEA AquaLogic Service Bus 3.0, BEA WebLogic Integration, Cisco ACE XML Gateway, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Oracle Fusion
AmberPoint announced today that it has extended the reach of its runtime SOA governance