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Novel User Interface Design: Special Projects' Experimental "Magic UX" System

A completely different way of using your smartphone

By Rain Noe - November 13, 2018

London-based product design firm Special Projects has developed an experimental phone UI that's simultaneously forward- and backward-looking. I mean that figuratively, not literally. The designers focused on the non-intuitive nature of switching between apps, and came up with this Magic UX alternative:

?Magic UX by Special Projects from Special Projects on Vimeo.

On the one hand it's undeniably clever. On the other hand, technology has reached the point where I can no longer tell if we're moving forwards or backwards.

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

3 Comments

Ross Oliver

7 months ago

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We don't need a new way of switching between apps. We need to move away from the software-centered paradigm of interfaces. Read the book "Tog on Interface" (published in 1992) in which the author inverts this paradigm and the document is at the top of the hierarchy, not the software. Apps should operate directly on objects in the document. Imagine you are working on a proposal, which contains complex text, spreadsheets, photos, CAD drawings, etc. Wouldn't it be more natural to edit those objects directly in the proposal, rather than have to switch to Excel or Autocad or Photoshop? Some software like OneNote can partially do this for simple objects. But we will never get there as long as engineers are designing software interfaces.

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Kole Lawrence

7 months ago

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Great solution that inspired me. Thanks guys! I wanna see more works like this one.

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Bobtato Smith

7 months ago

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Like most people to whom this idea has occurred, I managed to think of several reasons why it's not very good before I even got out of the shower, let alone made a self-congratulatory video failing to demonstrate it actually working.

Like all accelerometer-based UI, it's useless in mobile situations and highly problematic in accessibility terms. If it requires a special action to trigger switching, it doesn't remove the problem it allegedly solves. If it doesn't, you have to hold completely still to use the current app. If apps are pinned to actual geographic places, then it creates the problem that you have to go to your fridge to use the app you pinned there. It's no more intuitive, and less flexible, than organising apps in a fictional space; etc.

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