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Introduction

Ubiquitous computing... little computers everywhere... the idea comes from Art. Society has been benefiting from Ubiquitous Art for years now. Something in almost every environment you enter today has been designed, improved or influenced by an artist. Look at your clothing--some of it must have been designed by a fashion artist. Look around the room--the chair you sit in, the desk you sit at, the telephone you talk on, the picture frame that surrounds a family photo, the utensils we eat and cook with, the jacket of the book we read, automobiles, postage stamps, the advertisement on the back page of a magazine, even the very typeface of the paper you're reading now. Art enhances and improves our aesthetic environment at every opportunity--until we sit down at a personal computer.

Blah! Something is not quite right with the aesthetics of today's graphical user operating environments and software applications. As a formally trained visual artist, I want to learn what role Art and the artist play in the creation of GUI software in the past, present, and future. My three main questions are:

How have visual artists contributed to existing user graphical interfaces?
What do people think of aesthetics in existing GUI's?
How can visual artists and the discipline of visual art help improve graphical user interfaces now and in the future?

I've prepared for this discussion in the following way:

By reading books and articles that address artistic aspects of user interface design. At every opportunity, investigating icons as a graphical element of focus.
By speaking with practicing commercial artists who rely on computer software to perform their job.
By completing two related assignments for a course in Human-Computer Interaction this quarter, and...
By brainstorming some potential applications of Art to interface design for our `future contributions' section.

Next: What role have artists Up: Art and the User Previous: Contents Contents

sean dreilinger