About Face 2.0(c) The Essentials of Interaction Design

Any book on user interface design must discuss windows (with a lowercase w). We will first place these omnipresent rectangles in some historical perspective to keep the reader from imbuing them with too much intrinsic value. The remainder of the chapter discusses important behavioral attributes of windows and multiwindowed applications, and when their use is (and isn't) appropriate.

PARC and the Alto

Modern GUIs all derive their appearance from the Xerox Alto, an experimental desktop computer system developed in the mid-1970s at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), now PARC, Inc. PARC's Alto was the first computer with a graphical interface and was designed to explore the potential of computers as desktop business systems. The Alto was designed as a networked office system where documents could be composed, edited, and viewed in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) form, stored, retrieved, transferred electronically between workstations, and printed. The Alto system contributed many significant innovations to the vernacular of desktop computing that we now regard as commonplace: the mouse, the rectangular window, the scroll-bar, the push-button, the "desktop metaphor," object-oriented programming, drop-down menus, the Ethernet, and laser printing.

PARC's effect on the industry and contemporary computing was profound. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, chairmen of Apple Computer and Microsoft, respectively, saw the Alto at PARC and were indelibly impressed.

Xerox tried to commercialize the Alto itself, and later a derivative computer system called the Star, but both were expensive, complex, agonizingly slow, and commercial failures. It was widely felt that executive management at Xerox, then primarily a copy machine company, didn't have the vision or the gumption to put a concerted effort behind marketing and selling the "paperless office." The brain trust at PARC, realizing that Xerox had blown an opportunity of legendary proportions, began an exodus that greatly enriched other software companies, particularly Apple and Microsoft.

Steve Jobs and his PARC refugees immediately tried to duplicate the Alto/Star with the Lisa. In many ways they succeeded, including copying the Star's failure to deal with reality. The Lisa was remarkable, accessible, exciting, too expensive ($9995 in 1983), and frustratingly slow. Even though it was a decisive commercial failure, it ignited the imagination of many people in the small but booming microcomputer industry.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates was less impressed by the sexy "graphicalness" of the Alto/Star than he was by the advantages of an object-oriented presentation and communication model. Software produced by Microsoft in the early 1980s, notably the spreadsheet Multiplan (the forerunner of Excel), reflected this thinking.

Steve Jobs wasn't deterred by the failure of the Lisa. He was convinced that PARC's vision of a truly graphical personal computer was an idea whose time had come. He added to his cadre of PARC refugees by raiding Apple's various departments for skilled and energetic individuals, then set up a skunk works to develop a commercially viable incarnation of the Alto. The result was the legendary Macintosh, a machine that has had enormous influence on our technology, design, and culture. The Mac single-handedly brought an awareness of design and aesthetics to the industry. It not only raised the standards for user-friendliness, but it also enfranchised a whole population of skilled individuals from disparate fields who were previously locked out of computing because of the industry's self-absorption in techno-trivia.

The almost-religious aura surrounding the Macintosh was also associated with many aspects of the Mac's user interface. The drop-down menus, metaphors, dialog boxes, rectangular overlapping windows and other elements all became part of the mystique. Unfortunately, because its design has acquired these heroic proportions, its failings have often gone unexamined.