User illusion

My main complaint (about modern interfaces) is that metaphor is a poor metaphor for what needs to be done. At PARC we coined the phrase ‘user illusion’ to describe what we were about when designing user interfaces. There are clear connotations to the stage, theatrics, and magic, all of which give much stronger hints as to the direction to be followed… should we transfer the paper metaphor so perfectly that the screen is as hard as paper to erase and change, clearly not. – Alan Kay


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