đ Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (Gwern Branwen). In Minority Report they have "futuristic" interfaces where you wave your arms around to manipulate 3D projections. In the real world your arms would get very tired very quickly. Project Xanadu tried to create a hypertext environment with lots of guarantees, but Gwern's realization about the UX is notable:
âOh my god. Itâs completely unreadable.â
The lines were confusing clutter, especially as they crisscrossed (a perennial problem in sidenotes layout, made far worse by the outlines). None of the âsidenotesâ were readable because the screen was so small. Even as you simply scrolled, for many possible settings, you were unable to read anything! How could a document UI where often you could read nothing have ever seemed like a good idea? The UI was just terribleâit could never have worked. Even on a large screen like my 4k monitor, I wouldnât want that.
The lesson?
So, to me, Project Xanadu is a case-study in why designers must mock-up and prototype their designs before too much is invested in them. Xanadu wasnât the victim of âWorse is Betterâ; it was just a solution in search of a problem.