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Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report BY KYLE VANHEMERT 01.13.14 6:30 AM <img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her-joaquin-phoenix-41-660x371.jpg" alt="The future we see in Her is one where technology has dissolved into everyday life." width="660" height="371" class="size-large wp-image-397341"> The future we see in Her is one where technology has dissolved into everyday life. A few weeks into the making of Her, Spike Jonze’s new flick about romance in the age of artificial intelligence, the director had something of a breakthrough. After poring over the work of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists trying to figure out how, exactly, his artificially intelligent female lead should operate, Jonze arrived at a critical insight: Her, he realized, isn’t a movie about technology. It’s a movie about people. With that, the film took shape. Sure, it takes place in the future, but what it’s really concerned with are human relationships, as fragile and complicated as they’ve been from the start. Of course on another level Her is very much a movie about technology. One of the two main characters is, after all, a consciousness built entirely from code. That aspect posed a unique challenge for Jonze and his production team: They had to think like designers. Assuming the technology for AI was there, how would it operate? What would the relationship with its “user” be like? How do you dumb down an omniscient interlocutor for the human on the other end of the earpiece?

Why Her Will Dominate Ui Design Even More Than Minority Report Wired Design Wired Com

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Page 1: Why Her Will Dominate Ui Design Even More Than Minority Report Wired Design Wired Com

Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority ReportBY KYLE VANHEMERT 01.13.14 6:30 AM

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her-joaquin-phoenix-41-660x371.jpg"alt="The future we see in Her is one where technology has dissolved into everyday life." width="660"height="371" class="size-large wp-image-397341">

The future we see in Her is one where technology has dissolved into everyday life.

A few weeks into the making of Her, Spike Jonze’s new flick about romance in the age of artificial intelligence, the directorhad something of a breakthrough. After poring over the work of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists trying to figure out how,exactly, his artificially intelligent female lead should operate, Jonze arrived at a critical insight: Her, he realized, isn’t amovie about technology. It’s a movie about people. With that, the film took shape. Sure, it takes place in the future, butwhat it’s really concerned with are human relationships, as fragile and complicated as they’ve been from the start.

Of course on another level Her is very much a movie about technology. One of the two main characters is, after all, aconsciousness built entirely from code. That aspect posed a unique challenge for Jonze and his production team: Theyhad to think like designers. Assuming the technology for AI was there, how would it operate? What would the relationshipwith its “user” be like? How do you dumb down an omniscient interlocutor for the human on the other end of the earpiece?

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When AI is cheap,what does all theother technologylook like?

For production designer KK Barrett, the man responsible for styling the world inwhich the story takes place, Her represented another sort of design challenge.Barrett’s previously brought films like Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, andWhere the Wild Things Are to life, but the problem here was a new one, requiringmore than a little crystal ball-gazing. The big question: In a world where you canbuy AI off the shelf, what does all the other technology look like?

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her8.jpg" alt="In Her, the future almostlooks more like the past." width="660" height="371" class="size-full wp-image-394211">

In Her, the future almost looks more like the past.

Technology Shouldn’t Feel Like Technology

One of the first things you notice about the “slight future” of Her, as Jonze has described it, is that there isn’t all that muchtechnology at all. The main character Theo Twombly, a writer for the bespoke love letter serviceBeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, still sits at a desktop computer when he’s at work, but otherwise he rarely has his face ina screen. Instead, he and his fellow future denizens are usually just talking, either to each other or to their operatingsystems via a discrete earpiece, itself more like a fancy earplug anything resembling today’s cyborgian Bluetoothheadsets.

In this “slight future” world, things are low-tech everywhere you look. The skyscrapers in this futuristic Los Angeles haven’tturned into towering video billboards a la Blade Runner; they’re just buildings. Instead of a flat screen TV, Theo’s livingroom just has nice furniture.

This is, no doubt, partly an aesthetic concern; a world mediated through screens doesn’t make for very rewarding mise enscene. But as Barrett explains it, there’s a logic to this technological sparseness. “We decided that the movie wasn’t about

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Theo Twombly stillsits at a desktopcomputer whenhe’s at work, butotherwise he rarelyhas his face in ascreen.

technology, or if it was, that the technology should be invisible,” he says. “And not invisible like a piece of glass.”Technology hasn’t disappeared, in other words. It’s dissolved into everyday life.

Here’s another way of putting it. It’s not just that Her, the movie, is focused on people. It also shows us a future wheretechnology is more people-centric. The world Her shows us is one where the technology has receded, or one where we’velet it recede. It’s a world where the pendulum has swung back the other direction, where a new generation of designersand consumers have accepted that technology isn’t an end in itself–that it’s the real world we’re supposed to beconnecting to. (Of course, that’s the ideal; as we see in the film, in reality, making meaningful connections is as difficult asever.)

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her7.jpg" alt="Theo still has a desktopdisplay at work and at home, but elsewhere technology is largely invisible. " width="660" height="371"class="size-full wp-image-394031">

Theo still has a desktop display at work and at home, but elsewhere technology is largely invisible.

Jonze had help in finding the contours of this slight future, including conversationswith designers from New York-based studio Sagmeister & Walsh and an earlymeeting with Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, principals at architecture firmDS+R. As the film’s production designer, Barrett was responsible for making it areality.

Throughout that process, he drew inspiration from one of his favorite books, avisual compendium of futuristic predictions from various points in history. Basically,the book reminded Barrett what not to do. “It shows a lot of things and it makes youlaugh instantly, because you say, ‘those things never came to pass!’” he explains.“But often times, it’s just because they over-thought it. The future is much simplerthan you think.”

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That’s easy to say in retrospect, looking at images of Rube Goldbergian kitchens and scenes of commute by jet pack. ButJonze and Barrett had the difficult task of extrapolating that simplification forward from today’s technological moment.

Theo’s home gives us one concise example. You could call it a “smart house,” but there’s little outward evidence of it.What makes it intelligent isn’t the whizbang technology but rather simple, understated utility. Lights, for example, turn offand on as Theo moves from room to room. There’s no app for controlling them from the couch; no control panel on thewall. It’s all automatic. Why? “It’s just a smart and efficient way to live in a house,” says Barrett.

Today’s smartphones were another object of Barrett’s scrutiny. “They’re advanced, but in some ways they’re not advancedwhatsoever,” he says. “They need too much attention. You don’t really want to be stuck engaging them. You want to befree.” In Barrett’s estimation, the smartphones just around the corner aren’t much better. “Everyone says we’re supposedto have a curved piece of flexible glass. Why do we need that? Let’s make it more substantial. Let’s make it somethingthat feels nice in the hand.”

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her3.jpg" alt="Theo's smartphone wasdesigned to be "substantial," something that first and foremost "feels goodin the hand." " width="660" height="370" class="size-full wp-image-394071">

Theo’s smartphone was designed to be “substantial,” something that first and foremost “feels good in the hand.”

Theo’s phone in the film is just that–a handsome hinged device that looks more like an art deco cigarette case than aniPhone. He uses it far less frequently than we use our smartphones today; it’s functional, but it’s not ubiquitous. As anobject, it’s more like a nice wallet or watch. In terms of industrial design, it’s an artifact from a future where gadgets don’tneed to scream their sophistication–a future where technology has progressed to the point that it doesn’t need to look liketechnology.

All of these things contribute to a compelling, cohesive vision of the future–one that’s dramatically different from what weusually see in these types of movies. You could say that Her is, in fact, a counterpoint to that prevailing vision of the

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future–the anti-Minority Report. Imagining its world wasn’t about heaping new technology on society as we know it today.It was looking at those places where technology could fade into the background, integrate more seamlessly. It was aboutenvisioning a future, perhaps, that looked more like the past. “In a way,” says Barrett, “my job was to undesign the design.”

The Holy Grail: A Discrete User Interface

The greatest act of undesigning in Her, technologically speaking, comes with the interface used throughout the film. Theodoesn’t touch his computer–in fact, while he has a desktop display at home and at work, neither have a keyboard. Instead,he talks to it. “We decided we didn’t want to have physical contact,” Barrett says. “We wanted it to be natural. Hence theelimination of software keyboards as we know them.”

Again, voice control had benefits simply on the level of moviemaking. A conversation between Theo and Sam, hisartificially intelligent OS, is obviously easier for the audience to follow than anything involving taps, gestures, swipes orscreens. But the voice-based UI was also a perfect fit for a film trying to explore what a less intrusive, less demandingvariety of technology might look like.

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her2.jpg" alt="The main interface in thefilm is voice--Theo communicates to his AI OS through a discrete ear plug." width="660" height="371"class="size-full wp-image-394081">

The main interface in the film is voice–Theo communicates to his AI OS through a discrete ear plug.

Indeed, if you’re trying to imagine a future where we’ve managed to liberate ourselves from screens, systems basedaround talking are hard to avoid. As Barrett puts it, the computers we see in Her “don’t ask us to sit down and payattention” like the ones we have today. He compares it to the fundamental way music beats out movies in so manysituations. Music is something you can listen to anywhere. It’s complementary. It lets you operate in 360 degrees. Moviesrequire you to be locked into one place, looking in one direction. As we see in the film, no matter what Theo’s up to in reallife, all it takes to bring his OS into the fold is to pop in his ear plug.

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Looking at it that way, you can see the audio-based interface in Her as a novel form of augmented reality computing.Instead of overlaying our vision with a feed, as we’ve typically seen it, Theo gets a one piped into his ear. At the sametime, the other ear is left free to take in the world around him.

Barrett sees this sort of arrangement as an elegant end point to the trajectory we’re already on. Think about what happenstoday when we’re bored at the dinner table. We check our phones. At the same time, we realize that’s a bit rude, and asBarrett sees it, that’s one of the great promises of the smartwatch: discretion.

“They’re a little more invisible. A little sneakier,” he says. Still, they’re screens that require eyeballs. Instead, Barrett says,“imagine if you had an ear plug in and you were getting your feed from everywhere.” Your attention would still be divided,but not nearly as flagrantly.

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her5.jpg" alt="Theo chops it up with aholographic video game character." width="660" height="374" class="size-full wp-image-394051">

Theo chops it up with a holographic videogame character.

Of course, a truly capable voice-based UI comes with other benefits. Conversational interfaces make everything easier touse. When every different type of device runs an OS that can understand natural language, it means that every menu,every tool, every function is accessible simply by requesting it.

That, too, is a trend that’s very much alive right now. Consider how today’s mobile operating systems, like iOS andChromeOS, hide the messy business of file systems out of sight. Theo, with his voice-based valet as intermediary, isburdened with even less under-the-hood stuff than we are today. As Barrett puts it: “We didn’t want him fiddling with thingsand fussing with things.” In other words, Theo lives in a future where everything, not just his iPad, “just works.”

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Theo lives in afuture whereeverything, not justhis iPad, “justworks.”

AI: the ultimate UX challenge

The central piece of invisible design in Her, however, is that of Sam, the artificiallyintelligent operating system and Theo’s eventual romantic partner. Theirrelationship is so natural that it’s easy to forget she’s a piece of software. But Jonzeand company didn’t just write a girlfriend character, label it AI, and call it a day.Indeed, much of the film’s dramatic tension ultimately hinges not just on the waysartificial intelligence can be like us but the ways it cannot.

Much of Sam’s unique flavor of AI was written into the script by Jonze himself. Buther inclusion led to all sorts of conversations among the production team about the

nature of such a technology. “Anytime you’re dealing with trying to interact with a human, you have to think of humans asoperating systems. Very advanced operating systems. Your highest goal is to try to emulate them,” Barrett says.Superficially, that might mean considering things like voice pattern and sensitivity and changing them based on the settingor situation.

Even more quesitons swirled when they considered how an artificially intelligent OS should behave. Are they a goodlistener? Are they intuitive? Do they adjust to your taste and line of questioning? Do they allow time for you to think? AsBarrett puts it, “you don’t want a machine that’s always telling you the answer. You want one that approaches you like,‘let’s solve this together.’”

In essence, it means that AI has to be programmed to dumb itself down. “I think it’s very important for OSes in the future tohave a good bedside manner.” Barrett says. “As politicians have learned, you can’t talk at someone all the time. You haveto act like you’re listening.”

<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/01/her6.jpg" alt="AI's killer app, as we see inthe film, is the ability to adjust to the emotional state of its user." width="660" height="371" class="size-fullwp-image-394041">

AI’s killer app, as we see in the film, is the ability to adjust to the emotional state of its user.

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As we see in the film, though, the greatest asset of AI might be that it doesn’t have one fixed personality. Instead, its abilityto figure out what a person needs at a given moment emerges as the killer app.

Theo, emotionally desolate in the midst of a hard divorce, is having a hard time meeting people, so Sam goads him intogoing on a blind date. When Theo’s friend Amy splits up with her husband, her own artificially intelligent OS acts as a sortof therapist. “She’s helping me work through some things,” Amy says of her virtual friend at one point.

In our own world, we may be a long way from computers that are able to sense when we’re blue and help raise our spiritsin one way or another. But we’re already making progress down this path. In something as simple as a responsive weblayout or iOS 7′s “Do Not Disturb” feature, we’re starting to see designs that are more perceptive about the real worldcontext surrounding them–where or how or when they’re being used. Google Now and other types of predictive softwareare ushering in a new era of more personalized, more intelligent apps. And while Apple updating Siri with a few cannedjokes about her Hollywood counterpart might not amount to a true sense of humor, it does serve as another example ofhow we’re making technology more human–a preoccupation that’s very much alive today.