A consistently valuable interface design prompt for me: how would I do [X activity] with paper/pen/physical tools? The answer is often so much more fluid and improvisational than typical UI idioms and "data structures" tend to produce!
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agreed! been poking at a structured editing concept for a while which can be described as writing down bits of code/spec/comments/values on postits and then re/arranging them in a grid, where vertical adjacency connotes flow and horizontal connotes alternative or annotation >>>
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point being to problematize the boundary between structured vs unstructured, explanatory vs exploratory programming. while a soup of text is in principle infinitely remixable, trad hierarchical syntax can counter playful physicality
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In general, I feel UI design and physical simulation will eventually merge as fields, perhaps adjacently to game engines. Ultimately we want to saturate the bandwidth of our full proprioceptive frames; how else can we do this except by creating miniature universes?
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Possibly by bringing computation into physical reality, a la Dynamicland…
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While I love dynamicland and other XR explorations in this space by eleVR and others, I feel there's still so much to do in properly physicalizing conventional 2d interfaces. Things need to be wobblier.
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