I disagree with about 90% of this article.
I can't say that I agree with much more, but hey, I'm the Toynbee Tile guy. IMO design should 1) get the job done, and 2) feel good doing it. More often than not, that means not being noticeably present. Something that feels refreshing the first few times often becomes annoying after repetition. The way that posts float into Google+ from the bottom left on mobile is an example. I was recently pointed to this: http://wicky.nillia.ms/headroom.js and was tempted, but chose not to.
I'll add a Point 3: AND THAT'S ALL. Most of the arguments in this article reflect an immersive UI - if I'm playing a side-scroller I'm probably not trying to do something else at the same time. Thus, audible cues work fine. Give me audible cues in in a calendar app, though, and suddenly you're requiring immersion of me when in fact your app is a tiny portion of my involvement. That's why her statement about taking cues from '90s movies rings so hollow - bleepy bloopy floaty windows are awesome for presentation and shit for interaction. Considering most every UI is designed for interaction and always has been, there's a reason things haven't changed appreciably since PARC.
If I can turn an apps sounds off It's pretty much guaranteed that I will only hear them once. People who have click sounds enabled on their touchscreeen phones key boards leave me in awe, how can they take it, are they mad men or fucking demons? Makes me want to slap the phone out of their hand.
Funny you say that... My audio stopped working on my phone recently. I usually have the sound off so I didn't notice it at first. Then, I missed a few calls in the evening even though sound was on and I couldn't hear anything via youtube, "unlock sound" etc. Turned out, there was some corrosion on the bottom plug that made my phone think it was plugged into an external device and handed over operations to said imaginary device. Then, after a few weeks of no sound, I about shit my pants when the loudest "clickly clack clicky clack" sound exploded as I was texting. I was elated! I was intrigued! I could hear again! And so naturally, I immediately turned my keyboard sounds off, switched my phone to silent, and continued about my normal life. Turns out, not having your phone ring is kind of nice.
I always have my phone silenced. It eliminates the awkward phone going off during a meeting or in the library etc. The other day it somehow was switched back on and it rang. -I had completely forgotten that I had a song for my ringtone.
1) A designer who hates "arbitrary social functions" designs an arbitrary social function and then bitches when it gets rejected because she doesn't understand arbitrary social functions. 2) A designer whose "heart = like" idea gets rejected then says "My previous colleague’s refusal to add an emotionally-associated action to the app is a symptom of a pervasive obsession in the tech industry. The visual trend in interface design occasionally mimics interfaces out of past science fiction T.V. shows and movies." Note that pervasive becomes occasional one sentence later, yet the rest of the article sticks with pervasive. 3) "In this dream from the 90's, we hoped for a world where every computer knows us personally. We would wake up to them, have them around us all day, and they would be the last thing we interact with before we go to sleep." Apparently someone hasn't seen Star Trek (1966). 4) AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: "The pursuit of delight is in the details." Said the girl who messed up one detail, and then argued it was because too many people were longing for Siri and Minority Report in 1994. 5) So let's look to video games, the most immersive form of casual entertainment humanity has ever created, in order to understand casual UI. In particular, sound. Which is so important ("Sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviourally") that we ought to be able to turn it off at will ("provided they have the option to opt-out."). 6) Pixar. 7) Vine's interface is human because it looks like a drawer (despite the fact that it was engineered to behave like a roll-up blind, a UI trick dating back to OS 6 on Mac). 8) Use words. 9) "The future of interface design isn’t a dream from the 90s. The future of interface design is about emotional awareness; connecting us with products the way we connect with each other." Therefore, you were wrong to reject my heart. I'm cool with (8). (1)-(7) and (9) are pretty lazy and dishonest arguments to make and, in the case of the Pixar jab, pretty out there. Okay, not 90%. 88.9.%