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Comparing Sci-Fi HUDs in 2024 Movies

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As in previous years, in preparation for awarding the Fritzes, I watched as many sci-fi movies as I could find across 2024. One thing that stuck out to me was the number of heads-up displays (HUDs) across these movies. There were a lot to them. So in advance of the awards, lets look and compare these. (Note the movies included here are not necessarily nominees for a Fritz award.)

I usually introduce the plot of every movie before I talk about it. This provides some context to understanding the interface. However, that will happen in the final Fritzes post. I’m going to skip that here. Still, it’s only fair to say there will be some spoilers as I describe these.

If you read Chapter 8 of Make It So: Interaction Lessons from Science Fiction, you’ll recall that I’d identified four categories of augmentation.

  1. Sensor displays
  2. Location awareness
  3. Context awareness (objects, people)
  4. Goal awareness

These four categories are presented in increasing level of sophistication. Let’s use these to investigate and compare five primary examples from 2024, in order of their functional sophistication.

Dune 2

Lady Margot Fenring looks through augmented opera glasses at Feyd-Rautha in the arena. Dune 2 (2024).

True to the minimalism that permeates much of the interfaces film, the AR of this device has a rounded-rectangle frame from which hangs a measure of angular degrees to the right. There are a few ticks across the center of this screen (not visible in this particular screen shot). There is a row of blue characters across the bottom center. I can’t read Harkonnen, and though the characters change, I can’t quite decipher what most of them mean. But it does seem the leftmost character indicates azimuth and the rightmost character angular altitude of the glasses. Given the authoritarian nature of this House, it would make sense to have some augmentation naming the royal figures in view, but I think it’s a sensor display, which leaves the user with a lot of work to figure out how to use that information.

You might think this indicates some failing of the writer’s or FUI designers’ imagination. However, an important part of the history of Dune is a catastrophic conflict known as the Butlerian Jihad. This conflict involved devastating, large-scale wars against intelligent machines. As a result, machines with any degree of intelligence are considered sacrilege. So it’s not an oversight, but as a result, we can’t look to this as a model for how we might handle more sophisticated augmentations.

Alien: Romulus

Tyler teaches Rain how to operate a weapon aboard the Renaissance. Alien: Romulus (2024)

A little past halfway through the movie, the protagonists finally get their hands on some weapons. In a fan-service scene similar to one between Ripley and Hicks from Aliens (1986), Tyler shows Rain how to hold an FAA44 pulse rifle. He also teaches her how to operate it. The “AA” stands for “aiming assist”, a kind of object awareness. (Tyler asserts this is what the colonial marines used, which kind of retroactively saps their badassery, but let’s move on.) Tyler taps a small display on the user-facing rear sight, and a white-on-red display illuminates. It shows a low-res video of motion happening before it. A square reticle with crosshairs shows where the weapon will hit. A label at the top indicates distance. A radar sweep at the bottom indicates movement in 360° plan view, a sensor display.

When Rain pulls the trigger halfway, the weapon quickly swings to aim at the target. There is no indication of how it would differentiate between multiple targets. It’s also unclear how Rain told it that the object in the crosshairs earlier is what she wants it to track now. Or how she might identify a friendly to avoid. Red is a smart choice for low-light situations as red is known to not interfere with night vision. Also it’s elegantly free of flourishes and fuigetry.

I’m not sure the halfway-trigger is the right activation mechanism. Yes, it allows the shooter to maintain a proper hold and remain ready with the weapon, and allows them not have to look at the display to gain its assistance, but also requires them to be in a calm, stable circumstance that allows for fine motor control. Does this mean that in very urgent, chaotic situations, users are just left to their own devices? Seems questionable.

Alien: Romulus is beholden to the handful of movies in the franchise that preceded it. Part of the challenge for its designers is to stay recognizably a part of the body of work that was established in 1979 while offering us something new. This weapon HUD stays visually simple, like the interfaces from the original two movies. It narratively explains how a civilian colonist with no weapons training can successfully defend herself against a full-frontal assault by a dozen of this universe’s most aggressive and effective killers. However, it leaves enough unexplained that it doesn’t really serve as a useful model.

The Wild Robot

Roz examines an abandoned egg she finds. The Wild Robot (2024)

HUD displays of artificially intelligent robots are always difficult to analyze. It’s hard to determine what’s an augmentation, here loosely defined as an overlay on some datastream created for a user’s benefit but explicitly not by that user. It opposes a visualization of the AI’s own thoughts as they are happening. I’d much rather analyze these as augmentation provided for Roz, but it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny that way. What we see in this film are visualizations of Roz’ thoughts.

Fresh after booting up, Roz searches for a “customer,” and kind of finds one in a crab. The Wild Robot (2024).
Roz estimates the height of the wave in terms of her own height and feels urgency.
In language-learning mode, small word bubbles appear near speakers, and a progress bar hints that Roz is near completion.

In the HUD, there is an unchanging frame around the outside. Static cyan circuit lines extend to the edge. (In the main image above, the screen-green is an anomaly.) A sphere rotates in the upper left unconnected to anything. A hexagonal grid on the left has some hexes which illuminate and blink unconnected to anything. The grid moves unrelated to anything. These are fuigetry and neither conveys information nor provides utility.

Inside that frame, we see Roz’ visualized thinking across many scenes.

  • Locus of attention—Many times we see a reticle indicating where she’s focused, oftentimes with additional callout details written in robot-script.
  • “Customer” recognition—(pictured) Since it happens early in the film, you might think this is a goofy error. The potential customer she has recognized is a crab. But later in the film, Roz learns the language common to the animals of the island. All the animals display a human-like intelligence, so it’s completely within the realm of possibility that this blue little crustacean could be her customer. Though why that customer needed a volumetric wireframe augmentation is very unclear.
  • X-ray vision—While looking around for a customer, she happens upon an egg. The edge detection indicates her attention. Then she performs scans that reveal the growing chick inside and a vital signs display.
  • Damage report—After being attacked by a bear, Roz does an internal damage check and she notes the damage on screen.
  • Escape alert—(pictured) When a big wave approaches the shore on which she is standing, Roz estimates the height of the wave to be five time her height. Her panic expresses itself in a red tint around the outside edge.
  • Project management—Roz adopts Brightbill and undertakes the mission to mother him—specifically to teach him to eat, swim, and fly. As she successfully teaches him each of these things, she checks it off by updating one of three graphics that represent the topics.
  • Language acquisition—(pictured) Of all the AR in this movie, this scene frustrates me the most. There is a sequence in which Roz goes torpid to focus on learning the animal language. Her eyes are open the entire time she captures samples and analyzes them. The AR shows word bubbles associated with individual animal utterances. At first those bubbles are filled with cyan-colored robo-ese script. Over the course of processing a year’s worth of samples, individual characters are slowly replaced in the utterances with bold, green, Latin characters. This display kind of conveys the story beat of “she’s figuring out the language), but befits cryptography much more than acquisition of a new language.

If these were augmented reality, I’d have a lot of questions about why it wasn’t helping her more than it does. It might seem odd to think an AI might have another AI helping it, but humans have loads of systems that operate without explicit conscious thought, like preattentive processing, all the functions of our autonomic nervous system, sensory filtering, and recall, just to name a few. So I can imagine it would be a fine model for AI-supporting-AI.

Since it’s not augmented reality, it doesn’t really act as a model for real world designs except perhaps for its visual styling.

Borderlands

Claptrap is a little one-wheel robot that accompanies Lilith though her adventures on and around Pandora. We see things through his POV several times.

Claptrap sizes up Lilith from afar. Borderlands (2024).

When Claptrap first sees Lilith, it’s from his HUD. Like Roz’ POV display in The Wild Robot, the outside edge of this view has a fixed set of lines and greebles that don’t change, not even for a sensor display. I wish those lines had some relationship to his viewport, but that’s just a round lens and the lines are vaguely like the edges of a gear.

Scrolling up from the bottom left is an impressive set of textual data. It shows that a DNA match has been made (remotely‽ What kind of resolution is Claptrap’s CCD?) and some data about Lilith from what I presume is a criminal justice data feed: Name and brief physical description. It’s person awareness.

Below that are readouts for programmed directive and possible directive tasks. They’re funny if you know the character. Tasks include “Supply a never-ending stream of hilarious jokes and one-liners to lighten the mood in tense situations” and “Distract enemies during combat. Prepare the Claptrap dance of confusion!” I also really like the last one “Take the bullets while others focus on being heroic.” It both foreshadows a later scene and touches on the problem raised with Dr. Strange’s Cloak of Levitation: How do our assistants let us be heroes?

At the bottom is the label “HYPERION 09 U1.2” which I think might be location awareness? The suffix changes once they get near the vault. Hyperion a faction in the game. Not certain what it means in this context.

When driving in a chase sequence, his HUD gives him a warning about a column he should avoid. It’s not a great signal. It draws his attention but then essentially says “Good luck with that.” He has to figure out what object it refers to. (The motion tracking, admittedly, is a big clue.) But the label is not under the icon. It’s at the bottom left. If this were for a human, it would add a saccade to what needs to be a near-instantaneous feedback loop. Shouldn’t it be an outline or color overlay to make it wildly clear what and where the obstacle is? And maybe some augmentation on how to avoid it, like an arrow pointing right? As we see in a later scene (below) the HUD does have object detection and object highlighting. There it’s used to find a plot-critical clue. It’s just oddly not used here, you know, when the passengers’ lives are at risk.

When the group goes underground in search of the key to the Vault, Claptrap finds himself face to face with a gang of Psychos. The augmentation includes little animated red icons above the Psychos. Big Red Text summarizes “DANGER LEVEL: HIGH” across the middle, so you might think it’s demonstrating goal and context awareness. But Claptrap happens to be nigh-invulnerable, as we see moments later when he takes a thousand Psycho bullets without a scratch. In context, there’s no real danger. So,…holup. Who’s this interface for, then? Is it really aware of context?

When they visit Lilith’s childhood home, Claptrap finds a scrap of paper with a plot-critical drawing on it. The HUD shows a green outline around the paper. Text in the lower right tracks a “GARBAGE CATALOG” of objects in view with comments, “A PSYCHO WOULDN’T TOUCH THAT”, “LIFE-CHOICE QUESTIONING TRASH”, “VAULT HUNTER THROWBACK TRASH”. This interface gives a bit of comedy and leads to the Big Clue, but raises questions about consistency. It seems the HUDs in this film are narrativist.

In the movie, there are other HUDs like this one, for the Crimson Lance villains. They fly their hover-vehicles using them, but we don’t nearly get enough time to tease the parts apart.

Atlas

The HUD in Atlas happens when the titular character Atlas is strapped into an ARC9 mech suit, which has its own AGI named Smith. Some of the augmentations are communications between Smith and Atlas, but most are augmentations of the view before her. The viewport from the pilot’s seat is wide and the augmentations appear there.

Atlas asks Smith to display the user manuals. Atlas (2024)

On the way to evil android Harlan’s base, we see the frame of the HUD has azimuth and altitude indicators near the edge. There are a few functionless flourishes, like arcs at the left and right edges. Later we see object and person recognition (in this case, an android terrorist, Casca Decius). When Smith confirms they are hostile, the square reticles go from cyan to red, demonstrating context awareness.

Over the course of the movie Atlas has resisted Smith’s call to “sync” with him. At Harlan’s base, she is separated from the ARC9 unit for a while. But once she admits her past connection to Harlan, she and Smith become fully synched. She is reunited with the ARC9 unit and its features fully unlock.

As they tear through the base to stop the launch of some humanity-destroying warheads, they meet resistance from Harlan’s android army. This time the HUD wholly color codes the scene, making it extremely clear where the combatants are amongst the architecture.

Overlays indicate the highest priority combatants that, I suppose, might impede progress. A dashed arrow stretches through the scene indicating the route they must take to get to their goal. It focuses Atlas on their goal and obstacles, helping her decision-making around prioritization. It’s got rich goal awareness and works hard to proactively assist its user.

Despite being contrasting colors, they are well-controlled to not vibrate. You might think that the luminance of the combatants and architecture might be flipped, but the ARC9 is bulletproof, so there’s no real danger from the gunfire. (Contrast Claptrap’s fake danger warning, above.) Saving humanity is the higher priority. So the brightest (yellow) means “do this”, the second brightest (cyan) means “through this” and darkest (red) means “there will be some nuisances en route.” The luminescence is where it should be.

In the climactic fight with Harlan, the HUD even displays a predictive augmentation, illustrating where the fast-moving villain is likely to be when Atlas’ attacks land. This crucial augmentation helps her defeat the villain and save the day. I don’t think I’ve seen predictive augmentation outside of video games before.

If I was giving out an award for best HUD of 2024, Atlas would get it. It is the most fully-imagined HUD assistance across the year, and consistently, engagingly styled. If you are involved with modern design or the design of sci-fi interfaces, I highly recommend you check it out.

Stay tuned for the full Fritz awards, coming later this year.

Fritzes 2024 Winners

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So I missed synchronizing the Fritzes with the Oscars. By like, a lot. A lot a lot. That hype curve has come and gone. (In my defense, it’s been an intensely busy year.) I don’t think providing nominees and then waiting to reveal winners makes sense now, so I’ll just talk about them. It was another year where there weren’t a lot of noteworthy speculative interfaces, from an interaction design point of view. This is true enough that I didn’t have enough candidates to fill out my usual three categories of Believable, Narrative, and Overall. So, I’m just going to do a round-up of some of the best interfaces as I saw them, and at the end, name an absolute favorite.

The Kitchen

In a dystopian London, the rich have eliminated all public housing but one last block known as The Kitchen. Izi and Benji live there and are drawn together by the death of Benji’s mother, who turns out to be one of Izi’s romantic partners from the past. The film is full of technology, but the one part that really struck me was the Life After Life service where Izi works and where Benji’s mom’s funeral happens. It’s reminiscent of the Soylent Green suicide service, but much better done, better conceived. The film has a sci-fi setting, but don’t expect easy answers and Marvel-esque plot here. This film about relationships amid struggle and ends quite ambiguously.

The funerary interfaces are mostly translucent cyans with pinstripe dividing lines to organize everything. In the non-funerary the cyan is replaced with bits of saturated red. Everything funerary and non- feels as if it has the same art direction, which lends to reading the interfaces extradiegetically, but maybe that’s part of the point?

Pod Generation

This dark movie considers what happens if we gestated babies in technological wombs called pods.  The interactions with the pod are all some corporate version of intuitive, as if Apple had designed them. (Though the swipe-down to reveal is exactly backwards. Wouldn’t an eyelid or window shade metaphor be more natural? Maybe they were going for an oven metaphor, like bun in the oven? But cooking a child implications? No, it’s just wrong.)

The design is largely an exaggeration of Apple’s understated aesthetic, except for the insane, giant floral eyeball that is the AI therapist. I love how much it reads like a weirdcore titan and the characters are nonplussed, telegraphing how much the citizens of this world have normalized to inhumanity. I have to give a major ding to the iPad interface by which parents take care of their fetuses, as its art direction is a mismatch to everything else in the film and seems quite rudimentary, like a Flash app circa 1998.

Before I get to the best interfaces of the year, let’s take a moment to appreciate two trends I saw emerging in 2023. That of hyperminimalist interfaces and of interface-related comedy.

Hyperminimalist interfaces

This year I noticed that many movies are telling stories with very minimal interfaces. As in, you can barely call them designed since they’re so very minimalist. This feels like a deliberate contrast to the overwhelming spectacle that permeates, say, the MCU. They certainly reduce the thing down to just the cause and effect that are important to the story. Following are some examples that illustrate this hyperminimalism.

Fingernails—fingernail-tester.
No One Will Save You—observation pod.
57 Seconds—time ring.
Landscape with Invisible Hand—translation device (there on the desk under the alien’s hand)

This could be a cost-saving tactic, but per the default New Criticism stance of this blog, we’ll take it as a design choice and note it’s trending.

Shout-out: Interface Comedy

I want to give a special shout-out to interface-related comedy over the past year.

Smoking Causes Coughing

The first comes from the French gonzo horror sci-fi Smoking Causes Coughing. In a nested story told by a barracuda that is on a grill being cooked, Tony is the harried manager of a log-processing plant whose day is ruined by her nephew’s somehow becoming stuck in an industrial wood shredder. Over the scene she attempts to reverse the motor, failing each time, partly owing to the unlabeled interface and bad documentation. It’s admittedly not sci-fi, just in a sci-fi film, and a very gory, very hilarious bit of interface humor in an schizoid film.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

The second is Guardians of the Galaxy 3. About a fifth of the way into the movie, the team spacewalks from the Milano to the surface of Orgocorp to infiltrate it. Once on the surface, Peter, who still pines for alternate-timeline Gamora, tries to strike up a private conversation with her. The suits have a forearm interface featuring a single row of colored stay-state buttons that roughly match the colors of the spacesuits they’re wearing. Quill presses the blue one and tries in vain to rekindle the spark between him and Gamora in a private conversation. But then a minute into the conversation, Mantis cuts in…

  • Mantis
  • Peter you know this is an open line, right?
  • Peter
  • What?
  • Mantis
  • We’re listening to everything you’re saying.
  • Drax
  • And it is painful.
  • Quill
  • And you’re just telling me now‽
  • Nebula
  • We were hoping it would stop on its own.
  • Peter
  • But I switched it over to private!
  • Mantis
  • What color button did you push?
  • Peter
  • Blue! For the blue suit!
  • Drax
  • Oh no.
  • Nebula
  • Blue is the open line for everyone.
  • Mantis
  • Orange is for blue.
  • Peter
  • What‽
  • Mantis
  • Black is for orange. Yellow is for green. Green is for red. And red is for yellow.
  • Drax
  • No, yellow is for yellow. Green is for red. Red is for green.
  • Mantis
  • I don’t think so.
  • Drax
  • Try it then.
  • Mantis (screaming)
  • HELLO!
  • Peter writhes in pain
  • Mantis
  • You were right.
  • Peter
  • How the hell and I supposed to know all of that?
  • Drax
  • Seems intuitive.

The Marvels

A third comedy bit happens in The Marvels, when Kamala Khan is nerding out over Monica Rambeau’s translucent S.H.I.E.L.D. tablet. She says…

  • Khan
  • Is this the new iPad? I haven’t seen it yet.
  • Rambeau
  • I wish.
  • Khan
  • Wait, if this is all top secret information, why is it on a clear case?

Rambeau has no answer, but there are, in fact, some answers.

Anyway, I want to give a shout-out to the writers for demonstrating with these comedy bits some self-awareness and good-natured self-owning of tropes. I see you and appreciate you. You are so valid.

Best Interfaces of 2023

But my favorite interfaces of 2023 come from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The interfaces throughout are highly stylized (so might be tough to perform the detailed analysis, which is this site’s bread-and-butter) but play the plot points perfectly.

In Across the Spider-Verse, while dealing difficulties with his home life and chasing down a new supervillain called The Spot, Miles Morales learns about The Society. The Society is a group of (thousands? Tens of thousands? of) Spider-people of every stripe and sort from across the Multiverse, whose overriding mission is to protect “canon” events in each universe that, no matter how painful, they believe are necessary to keep the fabric of reality from unraveling. It’s full of awesome interfaces.

Lyla is the general artificial intelligence that has a persistent volumetric avatar. She’s sassy and disagreeable and stylish and never runs, just teleports.

The wrist interfaces—called the Multiversal Gizmo—worn by members of The Society all present highly-contextual information with most-likely actions presented as buttons, and, as needed, volumetric alerts. Also note that Miguel’s Gizmo is longer, signaling his higher status within The Society.

Of special note is volumetric display that Spider Gwen uses to reconstruct the events at the Alchemax laboratory. The interface is so smart, telegraphs its complex functioning quickly and effectively, and describes a use that builds on conceivable but far-future applications of inference. The little dial that pops up allowing her to control time of the playback reminds me of Eye of Agamatto (though sadly I didn’t see evidence of the important speculative time-control details I’d provided in that analysis). The in-situ volumetric reconstruction reminds me of some of the speculative interfaces I’d proposed in the review of Deckard’s photo inspector from Blade Runner, and so was a big thrill to see.

All of the interfaces have style, are believable for the diegesis, and contribute to the narrative with efficiency. Congratulations to the team crafting these interfaces, and if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Go see it. It’s in a lot of places and the interfaces are awesome. (For full disclosure, I get no kickback from these referral links.)

Community: Lawnmower Maintenance

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Our last 3D file browsing system is from much later and in a different format. It appears in the TV series Community, season 6, episode 2, “Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care”. Thanks to the scifiinterfaces reader known by the handle djempirical for this recommendation.

Community is a TV sitcom rather than a film, with short, 25-minute episodes. The setting is a small Colorado USA community college at the time of broadcast, the years 2009 to 2015, where the characters are staff and students. The series is usually described as a cult classic rather than mainstream, with lots of geeky references and shout outs (it’s very quotable). While there are plot arcs across seasons, the episodes are largely standalone. I didn’t know anything about Community when I watched this particular episode but still enjoyed it.

There are significant differences in presentation and style from our earlier films. Community is made and set twenty years later, and so both characters and audience are assumed to be familiar with personal computers, smart phones, the Internet; and to at least have some idea of what virtual reality is. The earlier films treated computer systems with respect or even awe, while here the new technology is a target to make fun of.

The characters in Community use technology, but it is not usually central to the story, unlike for example The IT Crowd or Silicon Valley. This episode is one of the exceptions. Another is episode 5.8, “App Development and Condiments”, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in social media.

This particular episode has two plotlines, only one of which involves computers and interfaces. The easily influenced Dean of Greendale Community College has spent $5,000 (US) on a new virtual reality system called a “VirtuGood 6500”. (That the characters consider this expensive shows how much technology has changed in twenty years. Old timers like myself who remember the price tags on those elegant SGI 3D workstations mutter about kids today not knowing how good they have it.) College administrator Francesca and teacher Jeff first try to persuade Dean Pelton to locate the serial number of the system within the virtual reality world, which they need to return the system for a refund. When that fails, they must try to persuade the Dean to leave VR and return to the real world.

Note to those unfamiliar with the show: Though the Dean has a full name, in the show and amongst the fandom, he is known as “the Dean,” and so we’ll be referring to him as such. 

VirtuGood 6500 Virtual Reality World

The first scene with the new virtual reality system shows the Dean entering virtual reality for the first time.

He wears gloves and a very large headset, which are wired to a small computer worn in the middle of the back.

The Dean’s first experience of virtual reality. He is watching his hands rezz up. Community (2016)

There is a ring around the body at waist level, sliding vertically along guide posts. It is not just a barrier to protect against falling off the platform, because the Dean is wearing a seatbelt-style harness that connects him to the ring. He stands, in socks not shoes, on a smooth plastic platform base.

Jeff and Francesca read the instructions and watch the Dean. Community (2016)

While he is fiddling with straps and cables, Francesca and Jeff are reading the instructions in a 20 cm thick binder. The instructions for a new user are “When entering virtual reality you should calibrate the system by looking at your own hands, then turning them over and looking at the backs of them with a sense of wonder.” This is the first of several references to Disclosure and other earlier films.

Externally, the VR system indicates it is active by lighting up red LEDs around the front edge of the headset and around the waist ring. Internally, the system rezzes up the background from grayscale to color, and then rezzes up the hands of the avatar.

Neither the avatar nor the world are photorealistic, but since this is 2015, the graphics are much better than any similar system from the 1990s would be — even when made on a sitcom budget, rather than a feature film.

The Dean, represented by his blue avatar, arrives in the virtual world. Community (2016)

The ground plane is a polished hexagonal grid and the sky is an abstract purple pattern. Classical pillars are scattered around the landscape. A pterosaur flies overhead for no obvious reason, perhaps a reference to the old W Industries Dactyl Nightmare VR game.

Finding the serial number

The sequence we’re interested in happens just after the Dean’s initial forays into setting the timezone and clock, both of which require a complicated full-body gestural interface. Meanwhile, Francesca is reading the gigantic manual and finds that they can’t return the system for a refund without the serial number, which is stored within the virtual world.

Francesca and Jeff know that the Dean won’t want to return the VR system, so ask him to look for the file without revealing why they want it. The conversation highlights how bizarre the metaphors of this virtual world are:

  • Jeff
  • Go to…settings.
  • Dean
  • Is that in the volcano or the cobbler’s workshop?
  • Jeff
  • It’s a monastery.

The Dean turns his body around, which he can do because all the cables are connected to the computer on his back, not to the platform. He “walks” and then “runs” in place like a mime artist, body weight supported by the harness and waist ring. Since there aren’t any sensors attached to his legs or feet, there must be cameras or pressure sensors in the base. The avatar of the Dean runs across the landscape to the Settings monastery.

The Dean reaches the monastery. Community (2016)

The gates automatically open as he approaches. Inside, there is a checkerboard floor rather than hexagons, more pillars around the walls, and a central pool of green water.

The Dean enters the interior of the monastery. Community (2016)

At the far wall is a Disclosure–style filing cabinet, but this one is gigantic. It is so big that the Dean actually has to climb up to the drawer he wants.

The Dean climbs the filing cabinet to find a particular drawer. Community (2016)

At least these cabinets have permanent labels, unlike Disclosure’s. Inside are, again, Disclosure-style individual files.

The Dean opens one drawer in the filing cabinet. Community (2016)

The Dean finds the serial number file and holds it up. Jeff asks him to print it “by dragging it to the accessories and peripherals castle and planting it in the printer garden”. But the Dean has guessed the real reason why Francesca and Jeff want the file, so instead throws the file into the air and tries to delete it. He first makes a pushing gesture, palm out, which casts a beam at the file while he shouts “Delete”.

The Dean shoots a ray at the document. Community (2016)

In response the system pops up a giant text panel and also speaks the response in a slightly artificial voice, saying, “Selected”.

Dean Pelton receives system feedback that is text and speech, rather than graphical. Community (2016)

Since the file wasn’t deleted, we can assume that it can’t process voice input. He next mimes holding a bow and pulling an arrow back. A virtual bow and arrow appear, which he uses to shoot the file.

The Dean shoots an arrow at the document. Community (2016)

The arrow doesn’t do what he wants either, sorting the file. Finally he jumps into the air, catches the file, and drops to the ground. He then holds the file underwater, using both hands, in the central fountain. The file appears to struggle slightly and bubbles appear.

The Dean holds the serial number document under water. Community (2016)

The bubbles stop, the file sinks and disappears, and the system responds “DELETED”.

The Dean has foiled the plan to return the system for a refund, and he stays in virtual reality. Francesca sends Jeff to appeal directly to “the architect” (a shout-out to The Matrix), local VR designer and manufacturer Elroy. There’s more quotable dialogue here, such as this description of a task which we didn’t see:

“In order to copy a file, you have to throw a fireball at it. Then absorb the fire, then drop the flaming file into a crystal lake, then take out both copies and throw them into the side of a mountain.”

Jeff is unsuccessful and returns to Greendale, but Elroy is sufficiently moved to change his mind. Elroy visits Greendale with his own VR system, a more compact and apparently wireless headset and gloves, and enters the virtual world himself, demonstrating that this is also a multi-user system.

Elroy, after summoning a storm and growing to giant size, intimidates the Dean Pelton. Community (2016)

Elroy distracts the Dean in the virtual world, giving Jeff in the real world the opportunity to disconnect him. Elroy refunds the $5,000 and takes the VirtuGood 6500 away since we never see it again. The Dean is apparently cured of his VR addiction, although a closing shot does show him experimenting with one of those cardboard headsets for a phone.

Tagged: 3D rendering, ALL CAPS, HUD, Virtual Reality, addiction, architecture, avatar, big label, blue, direct manipulation, disposal, doorway, failure, furniture, gestural interface, gray, green, grid, hand, identification number, interaction, laser, mental models, mnemonic load, monster, navigating, plastic, point to select, poking fun, purple, sans serif, sense making, storage, touch, touch gesture, voice feedback, weapon, workflow

Analysis

In this episode, virtual reality and the 3D file system are deliberately portrayed as ridiculous for comedic effect. This doesn’t make it unworthy of analysis. For example, there’s this throw away line from Francesca to Jeff after the Dean has been in virtual reality for a few hours:

“He joked about wanting a pee jar earlier, and it’s gradually becoming less of a joke.”

It’s funny but also raises a real issue. Players of online computer games may do so for marathon sessions lasting many hours, and there are stories about the truly dedicated using bottles and buckets rather than getting up and leaving to use a toilet. What will virtual reality participants wearing headsets and gloves do? Wear space-suit style tubing? This is something that the serious VR literature rarely discusses, even when predicting how much time we’ll all be spending in virtual reality in the future.

How believable is the interface?

The VirtuGood 6500 is very believable for 2015. The headset is too large, perhaps because the props maker needed the extra space to keep the glowing lights and any batteries away from the actor’s face. Otherwise the headset and gloves are standard for VR, and using a backpack computer is an excellent design, removing the problem of entanglement as the user moves around.

On first viewing, I assumed that the supporting waist ring and smooth platform base were entirely fictional and built to keep costs down. Then while researching this review I found the Virtuix Omni, a VR treadmill where the user is supported by a waist level ring and walks or runs in place on a smooth surface. The only difference is that the Omni requires special shoes.

The virtual world, or at least the filing system, are also believable. The 3D graphics are well within the capabilities of a 2015 PC. The gestures we see are clear and easily distinguishable from one another. The mapping of gestures to actions may be silly, but not technically difficult.

How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?

The 3D file browsing interface works very well within the narrative since the objective of this plotline is to make fun of it. The virtual world is full of bizarre visual elements such as the pillars that don’t support anything. The gestures performed by users are dramatic and completely mismatched with the intended tasks.

This particular system was deliberately designed to be bad, but poorly designed visual metaphors and difficult to discover gestural interfaces are not unknown in the real world. It’s a useful reminder that virtual reality systems will not automatically be easier and more intuitive to use simply because they more closely mimic the real world or are more immersive.

How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?

This is another awful file browser. Even the Dean, a virtual reality enthusiast, is thwarted in his first two attempts to delete a file.

However it does succeed in the broader goal of making the user feel good. The Dean enjoys virtual reality and the sensation of power so much that he refuses to leave. It’s usually not recommended for mass market software but there is satisfaction in mastering an obscure interface that other people can’t.

Disclosure (1994)

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Our next 3D file browsing system is from the 1994 film Disclosure. Thanks to site reader Patrick H Lauke for the suggestion.

Like Jurassic Park, Disclosure is based on a Michael Crichton novel, although this time without any dinosaurs. (Would-be scriptwriters should compare the relative success of these two films when planning a study program.) The plot of the film is corporate infighting within Digicom, manufacturer of high tech CD-ROM drives—it was the 1990s—and also virtual reality systems. Tom Sanders, executive in charge of the CD-ROM production line, is being set up to take the blame for manufacturing failures that are really the fault of cost-cutting measures by rival executive Meredith Johnson.

The Corridor: Hardware Interface

The virtual reality system is introduced at about 40 minutes, using the narrative device of a product demonstration within the company to explain to the attendees what it does. The scene is nicely done, conveying all the important points we need to know in two minutes. (To be clear, some of the images used here come from a later scene in the film, but it’s the same system in both.)

The process of entangling yourself with the necessary hardware and software is quite distinct from interacting with the VR itself, so let’s discuss these separately, starting with the physical interface.

Tom wearing VR headset and one glove, being scanned. Disclosure (1994)

In Disclosure the virtual reality user wears a headset and one glove, all connected by cables to the computer system. Like most virtual reality systems, the headset is responsible for visual display, audio, and head movement tracking; the glove for hand movement and gesture tracking. 

There are two “laser scanners” on the walls. These are the planar blue lights, which scan the user’s body at startup. After that they track body motion, although since the user still has to wear a glove, the scanners presumably just track approximate body movement and orientation without fine detail.

Lastly, the user stands on a concave hexagonal plate covered in embedded white balls, which allows the user to “walk” on the spot.

Closeup of user standing on curved surface of white balls. Disclosure (1994)

Searching for Evidence

The scene we’re most interested in takes place later in the film, the evening before a vital presentation which will determine Tom’s future. He needs to search the company computer files for evidence against Meredith, but discovers that his normal account has been blocked from access.   He knows though that the virtual reality demonstrator is on display in a nearby hotel suite, and also knows about the demonstrator having unlimited access. He sneaks into the hotel suite to use The Corridor. Tom is under a certain amount of time pressure because a couple of company VIPs and their guests are downstairs in the hotel and might return at any time.

The first step for Tom is to launch the virtual reality system. This is done from an Indy workstation, using the regular Unix command line.

The command line to start the virtual reality system. Disclosure (1994)

Next he moves over to the VR space itself. He puts on the glove but not the headset, presses a key on the keyboard (of the VR computer, not the workstation), and stands still for a moment while he is scanned from top to bottom.

Real world Tom, wearing one VR glove, waits while the scanners map his body. Disclosure (1994)

On the left is the Indy workstation used to start the VR system. In the middle is the external monitor which will, in a moment, show the third person view of the VR user as seen earlier during the product demonstration.

Now that Tom has been scanned into the system, he puts on the headset and enters the virtual space.

The Corridor: Virtual Interface

“The Corridor,” as you’ve no doubt guessed, is a three dimensional file browsing program. It is so named because the user will walk down a corridor in a virtual building, the walls lined with “file cabinets” containing the actual computer files.

Three important aspects of The Corridor were mentioned during the product demonstration earlier in the film. They’ll help structure our tour of this interface, so let’s review them now, as they all come up in our discussion of the interfaces.

  1. There is a voice-activated help system, which will summon a virtual “Angel” assistant.
  2. Since the computers themselves are part of a multi-user network with shared storage, there can be more than one user “inside” The Corridor at a time.
    Users who do not have access to the virtual reality system will appear as wireframe body shapes with a 2D photo where the head should be.
  3. There are no access controls and so the virtual reality user, despite being a guest or demo account, has unlimited access to all the company files. This is spectacularly bad design, but necessary for the plot.

With those bits of system exposition complete, now we can switch to Tom’s own first person view of the virtual reality environment.

Virtual world Tom watches his hands rezzing up, right hand with glove. Disclosure (1994)

There isn’t a real background yet, just abstract streaks. The avatar hands are rezzing up, and note that the right hand wearing the glove has a different appearance to the left. This mimics the real world, so eases the transition for the user.

Overlaid on the virtual reality view is a Digicom label at the bottom and four corner brackets which are never explained, although they do resemble those used in cameras to indicate the preferred viewing area.

To the left is a small axis indicator, the three green lines labeled X, Y, and Z. These show up in many 3D applications because, silly though it sounds, it is easy in a 3D computer environment to lose track of directions or even which way is up. A common fix for the user being unable to see anything is just to turn 180 degrees around.

We then switch to a third person view of Tom’s avatar in the virtual world.

Tom is fully rezzed up, within cloud of visual static. Disclosure (1994)

This is an almost photographic-quality image. To remind the viewers that this is in the virtual world rather than real, the avatar follows the visual convention described in chapter 4 of Make It So for volumetric projections, with scan lines and occasional flickers. An interesting choice is that the avatar also wears a “headset”, but it is translucent so we can see the face.

Now that he’s in the virtual reality, Tom has one more action needed to enter The Corridor. He pushes a big button floating before him in space.

Tom presses one button on a floating control panel. Disclosure (1994)

This seems unnecessary, but we can assume that in the future of this platform, there will be more programs to choose from.

The Corridor rezzes up, the streaks assembling into wireframe components which then slide together as the surfaces are shaded. Tom doesn’t have to wait for the process to complete before he starts walking, which suggests that this is a Level Of Detail (LOD) implementation where parts of the building are not rendered in detail until the user is close enough for it to be worth doing.

Tom enters The Corridor. Nearby floor and walls are fully rendered, the more distant section is not complete. Disclosure (1994)

The architecture is classical, rendered with the slightly artificial-looking computer shading that is common in 3D computer environments because it needs much less computation than trying for full photorealism.

Instead of a corridor this is an entire multistory building. It is large and empty, and as Tom is walking bits of architecture reshape themselves, rather like the interior of Hogwarts in Harry Potter.

Although there are paintings on some of the walls, there aren’t any signs, labels, or even room numbers. Tom has to wander around looking for the files, at one point nearly “falling” off the edge of the floor down an internal air well. Finally he steps into one archway room entrance and file cabinets appear in the walls.

Tom enters a room full of cabinets. Disclosure (1994)

Unlike the classical architecture around him, these cabinets are very modern looking with glowing blue light lines. Tom has found what he is looking for, so now begins to manipulate files rather than browsing.

Virtual Filing Cabinets

The four nearest cabinets according to the titles above are

  1. Communications
  2. Operations
  3. System Control
  4. Research Data.

There are ten file drawers in each. The drawers are unmarked, but labels only appear when the user looks directly at it, so Tom has to move his head to centre each drawer in turn to find the one he wants.

Tom looks at one particular drawer to make the title appear. Disclosure (1994)

The fourth drawer Tom looks at is labeled “Malaysia”. He touches it with the gloved hand and it slides out from the wall.

Tom withdraws his hand as the drawer slides open. Disclosure (1994)

Inside are five “folders” which, again, are opened by touching. The folder slides up, and then three sheets, each looking like a printed document, slide up and fan out.

Axis indicator on left, pointing down. One document sliding up from a folder. Disclosure (1994)

Note the tilted axis indicator at the left. The Y axis, representing a line extending upwards from the top of Tom’s head, is now leaning towards the horizontal because Tom is looking down at the file drawer. In the shot below, both the folder and then the individual documents are moving up so Tom’s gaze is now back to more or less level.

Close up of three “pages” within a virtual document. Disclosure (1994)

At this point the film cuts away from Tom. Rival executive Meredith, having been foiled in her first attempt at discrediting Tom, has decided to cover her tracks by deleting all the incriminating files. Meredith enters her office and logs on to her Indy workstation. She is using a Command Line Interface (CLI) shell, not the standard SGI Unix shell but a custom Digicom program that also has a graphical menu. (Since it isn’t three dimensional it isn’t interesting enough to show here.)

Tom uses the gloved hand to push the sheets one by one to the side after scanning the content.

Tom scrolling through the pages of one folder by swiping with two fingers. Disclosure (1994)

Quick note: This is harder than it looks in virtual reality. In a 2D GUI moving the mouse over an interface element is obvious. In three dimensions the user also has to move their hand forwards or backwards to get their hand (or finger) in the right place, and unless there is some kind of haptic feedback it isn’t obvious to the user that they’ve made contact.

Tom now receives a nasty surprise.

The shot below shows Tom’s photorealistic avatar at the left, standing in front of the open file cabinet. The green shape on the right is the avatar of Meredith who is logged in to a regular workstation. Without the laser scanners and cameras her avatar is a generic wireframe female humanoid with a face photograph stuck on top. This is excellent design, making The Corridor usable across a range of different hardware capabilities.

Tom sees the Meredith avatar appear. Disclosure (1994)

Why does The Corridor system place her avatar here? A multiuser computer system, or even just a networked file server,  obviously has to know who is logged on. Unix systems in general and command line shells also track which directory the user is “in”, the current working directory. Meredith is using her CLI interface to delete files in a particular directory so The Corridor can position her avatar in the corresponding virtual reality location. Or rather, the avatar glides into position rather than suddenly popping into existence: Tom is only surprised because the documents blocked his virtual view.

Quick note: While this is plausible, there are technical complications. Command line users often open more than one shell at a time in different directories. In such a case, what would The Corridor do? Duplicate the wireframe avatar in each location? In the real world we can’t be in more than one place at a time, would doing so contradict the virtual reality metaphor?

There is an asymmetry here in that Tom knows Meredith is “in the system” but not vice versa. Meredith could in theory use CLI commands to find out who else is logged on and whether anyone was running The Corridor, but she would need to actively seek out that information and has no reason to do so. It didn’t occur to Tom either, but he doesn’t need to think about it,  the virtual reality environment conveys more information about the system by default.

We briefly cut away to Meredith confirming her CLI delete command. Tom sees this as the file drawer lid emitting beams of light which rotate down. These beams first erase the floating sheets, then the folders in the drawer. The drawer itself now has a red “DELETED” label and slides back into the wall.

Tom watches Meredith deleting the files in an open drawer. Disclosure (1994)

Tom steps further into the room. The same red labels appear on the other file drawers even though they are currently closed.

Tom watches Meredith deleting other, unopened, drawers. Disclosure (1994)

Talking to an Angel

Tom now switches to using the system voice interface, saying “Angel I need help” to bring up the virtual reality assistant. Like everything else we’ve seen in this VR system the “angel” rezzes up from a point cloud, although much more quickly than the architecture: people who need help tend to be more impatient and less interested in pausing to admire special effects.

The voice assistant as it appears within VR. Disclosure (1994)

Just in case the user is now looking in the wrong direction the angel also announces “Help is here” in a very natural sounding voice.

The angel is rendered with white robe, halo, harp, and rapidly beating wings. This is horribly clichéd, but a help system needs to be reassuring in appearance as well as function. An angel appearing as a winged flying serpent or wheel of fire would be more original and authentic (yes, really: ​​Biblically Accurate Angels) but users fleeing in terror would seriously impact the customer satisfaction scores.

Now Tom has a short but interesting conversation with the angel, beginning with a question:

  • Tom
  • Is there any way to stop these files from being deleted?
  • Angel
  • I’m sorry, you are not level five.
  • Tom
  • Angel, you’re supposed to protect the files!
  • Angel
  • Access control is restricted to level five.

Tom has made the mistake, as described in chapter 9 Anthropomorphism of the book, of ascribing more agency to this software program than it actually has. He thinks he is engaged in a conversational interface (chapter 6 Sonic Interfaces) with a fully autonomous system, which should therefore be interested in and care about the wellbeing of the entire system. Which it doesn’t, because this is just a limited-command voice interface to a guide.

Even though this is obviously scripted, rather than a genuine error I think this raises an interesting question for real world interface designers: do users expect that an interface with higher visual quality/fidelity will be more realistic in other aspects as well? If a voice interface assistant has a simple polyhedron with no attempt at photorealism (say, like Bit in Tron) or with zoomorphism (say, like the search bear in Until the End of the World) will users adjust their expectations for speech recognition downwards? I’m not aware of any research that might answer this question. Readers?

Despite Tom’s frustration, the angel has given an excellent answer – for a guide. A very simple help program would have recited the command(s) that could be used to protect files against deletion. Which would have frustrated Tom even more when he tried to use one and got some kind of permission denied error. This program has checked whether the user can actually use commands before responding.

This does contradict the earlier VR demonstration where we were told that the user had unlimited access. I would explain this as being “unlimited read access, not write”, but the presenter didn’t think it worthwhile to go into such detail for the mostly non-technical audience.

Tom is now aware that he is under even more time pressure as the Meredith avatar is still moving around the room. Realising his mistake, he uses the voice interface as a query language.

“Show me all communications with Malaysia.”
“Telephone or video?”
“Video.”

This brings up a more conventional looking GUI window because not everything in virtual reality needs to be three-dimensional. It’s always tempting for a 3D programmer to re-implement everything, but it’s also possible to embed 2D GUI applications into a virtual world.

Tom looks at a conventional 2D display of file icons inside VR. Disclosure (1994)

The window shows a thumbnail icon for each recorded video conference call. This isn’t very helpful, so Tom again decides that a voice query will be much faster than looking at each one in turn.

“Show me, uh, the last transmission involving Meredith.”

There’s a short 2D transition effect swapping the thumbnail icon display for the video call itself, which starts playing at just the right point for plot purposes.

Tom watches a previously recorded video call made by Meredith (right). Disclosure (1994)

While Tom is watching and listening, Meredith is still typing commands. The camera orbits around behind the video conference call window so we can see the Meredith avatar approach, which also shows us that this window is slightly three dimensional, the content floating a short distance in front of the frame. The film then cuts away briefly to show Meredith confirming her “kill all” command. The video conference recordings are deleted, including the one Tom is watching.

Tom is informed that Meredith (seen here in the background as a wireframe avatar) is deleting the video call. Disclosure (1994)

This is also the moment when the downstairs VIPs return to the hotel suite, so the scene ends with Tom managing to sneak out without being detected.

Virtual reality has saved the day for Tom. The documents and video conference calls have been deleted by Meredith, but he knows that they once existed and has a colleague retrieve the files he needs from the backup tapes. (Which is good writing: the majority of companies shown in film and TV never seem to have backups for files, no matter how vital.) Meredith doesn’t know that he knows, so he has the upper hand to expose her plot.

Analysis

How believable is the interface?

I won’t spend much time on the hardware, since our focus is on file browsing in three dimensions. From top to bottom, the virtual reality system starts as believable and becomes less so.

Hardware

The headset and glove look like real VR equipment, believable in 1994 and still so today. Having only one glove is unusual, and makes impossible some of the common gesture actions described in chapter 5 of Make It So, which require both hands.

The “laser scanners” that create the 3D geometry and texture maps for the 3D avatar and perform real time body tracking would more likely be cameras, but that would not sound as cool.

And lastly the walking platform apparently requires our user to stand on large marbles or ball bearings and stay balanced while wearing a headset. Uh…maybe…no. Apologetics fails me. To me it looks like it would be uncomfortable to walk on, almost like deterrent paving.

Software

The Corridor, unlike the 3D file browser used in Jurassic Park, is a special effect created for the film. It was a mostly-plausible, near future system in 1994, except for the photorealistic avatar. Usually this site doesn’t discuss historical context (the  “new criticism” stance), but I think in this case it helps to explain how this interface would have appeared to audiences almost two decades ago.

I’ll start with the 3D graphics of the virtual building. My initial impression was that The Corridor could have been created as an interactive program in 1994, but that was my memory compressing the decade. During the 1990s 3D computer graphics, both interactive and CGI, improved at a phenomenal rate. The virtual building would not have been interactive in 1994, was possible on the most powerful systems six years later in 2000, and looks rather old-fashioned compared to what the game consoles of the 21st C can achieve.

For the voice interface I made the opposite mistake. Voice interfaces on phones and home computing appliances have become common in the second decade of the 21st C, but in reality are much older. Apple Macintosh computers in 1994 had text-to-speech synthesis with natural sounding voices and limited vocabulary voice command recognition. (And without needing an Internet connection!) So the voice interface in the scene is believable.

The multi-user aspects of The Corridor were possible in 1994. The wireframe avatars for users not in virtual reality are unflattering or perhaps creepy, but not technically difficult. As a first iteration of a prototype system it’s a good attempt to span a range of hardware capabilities.

The virtual reality avatar, though, is not believable for the 1990s and would be difficult today. Photographs of the body, made during the startup scan, could be used as a texture map for the VR avatar. But live video of the face would be much more difficult, especially when the face is partly obscured by a headset.

How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?

The virtual reality system in itself is useful to the overall narrative because it makes the Digicom company seem high tech. Even in 1994 CD-ROM drives weren’t very interesting.

The Corridor is essential to the tension of the scene where Tom uses it to find the files, because otherwise the scene would be much shorter and really boring. If we ignore the virtual reality these are the interface actions:

  • Tom reads an email.
  • Meredith deletes the folder containing those emails.
  • Tom finds a folder full of recorded video calls.
  • Tom watches one recorded video call.
  • Meredith deletes the folder containing the video calls.

Imagine how this would have looked if both were using a conventional 2D GUI, such as the Macintosh Finder or MS Windows Explorer. Double click, press and drag, double click…done.

The Corridor slows down Tom’s actions and makes them far more visible and understandable. Thanks to the virtual reality avatar we don’t have to watch an actor push a mouse around. We see him moving and swiping, be surprised and react; and the voice interface adds extra emotion and some useful exposition. It also helps with the plot, giving Tom awareness of what Meredith is doing without having to actively spy on her, or look at some kind of logs or recordings later on.

Meredith, though, can’t use the VR system because then she’d be aware of Tom as well. Using a conventional workstation visually distinguishes and separates Meredith from Tom in the scene.

So overall, though the “action” is pretty mundane, it’s crucial to the plot, and the VR interface helps make this interesting and more engaging.

How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?

As described in the film itself, The Corridor is a prototype for demonstrating virtual reality. As a file browser it’s awful, but since Tom has lost all his normal privileges this is the only system available, and he does manage to eventually find the files he needs.

At the start of the scene, Tom spends quite some time wandering around a vast multi-storey building without a map, room numbers, or even coordinates overlaid on his virtual view. Which seems rather pointless because all the files are in one room anyway. As previously discussed for Johnny Mnemonic, walking or flying everywhere in your file system seems like a good idea at first, but often becomes tedious over time. Many actual and some fictional 3D worlds give users the ability to teleport directly to any desired location.

Then the file drawers in each cabinet have no labels either, so Tom has to look carefully at each one in turn. There is so much more the interface could be doing to help him with his task, and even help the users of the VR demo learn and explore its technology as well.

Contrast this with Meredith, who uses her command line interface and 2D GUI to go through files like a chainsaw.

Tom becomes much more efficient with the voice interface. Which is just as well, because if he hadn’t, Meredith would have deleted the video conference recordings while he was still staring at virtual filing cabinets. However neither the voice interface nor the corresponding file display need three dimensional graphics.

There is hope for version 2.0 of The Corridor, even restricting ourselves to 1994 capabilities. The first and most obvious is to copy 2D GUI file browsers, or the 3D file browser from Jurassic Park, and show the corresponding text name next to each graphical file or folder object. The voice interface is so good that it should be turned on by default without requiring the angel. And finally add some kind of map overlay with a you are here moving dot, like the maps that players in 3D games such as Doom could display with a keystroke.

Film making challenge: VR on screen

Virtual reality (or augmented reality systems such as Hololens) provide a better viewing experience for 3D graphics by creating the illusion of real three dimensional space rather than a 2D monitor. But it is always a first person view and unlike conventional 2D monitors nobody else can usually see what the VR user is seeing without a deliberate mirroring/debugging display. This is an important difference from other advanced or speculative technologies that film makers might choose to include. Showing a character wielding a laser pistol instead of a revolver or driving a hover car instead of a wheeled car hardly changes how to stage a scene, but VR does.

So, how can we show virtual reality in film?

There’s the first-person view corresponding to what the virtual reality user is seeing themselves. (Well, half of what they see since it’s not stereographic, but it’s cinema VR, so close enough.) This is like watching a screencast of someone else playing a first person computer game, the original active experience of the user becoming passive viewing by the audience. Most people can imagine themselves in the driving seat of a car and thus make sense of the turns and changes of speed in a first person car chase, but the film audience probably won’t be familiar with the VR system depicted and will therefore have trouble understanding what is happening. There’s also the problem that viewing someone else’s first-person view, shifting and changing in response to their movements rather than your own, can make people disoriented or nauseated.

A third-person view is better for showing the audience the character and the context in which they act. But not the diegetic real-world third-person view, which would be the character wearing a geeky headset and poking at invisible objects. As seen in Disclosure, the third person view should be within the virtual reality.

But in doing that, now there is a new problem: the avatar in virtual reality representing the real character. If the avatar is too simple the audience may not identify it with the real world character and it will be difficult to show body language and emotion. More realistic CGI avatars are increasingly expensive and risk falling into the Uncanny Valley. Since these films are science fiction rather than factual, the easy solution is to declare that virtual reality has achieved the goal of being entirely photorealistic and just film real actors and sets. Adding the occasional ripple or blur to the real world footage to remind the audience that it’s meant to be virtual reality, again as seen in Disclosure, is relatively cheap and quick.
So, solving all these problems results in the cinematic trope we can call Extradiegetic Avatars, which are third-person, highly-lifelike “renderings” of characters, with a telltale Hologram Projection Imperfection for audience readability, that may or may not be possible within the world of the film itself.

The “spectacular” suicide experience from Soylent Green

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The thanatorium is a speculative service for assisted suicide in Soylent Green. Suicide and death are not easy topics and I will do my best to address them seriously. Let me first take a moment to direct anyone who is considering or dealing with suicide to please stop reading this and talk to someone about it. I am unqualified to address—and this blog is not the place to work through—such issues.

There are four experiences to look at in the interface and service design of the Thanatorium: The patient, their beneficiaries, the usher to the beneficiaries, and the attendants to the patient. This post is about the patient themselves. Since there aren’t any technological interfaces, this will be a review of the service design from the patient’s and Soylent’s perspectives. If you’re only into this blog for technological interfaces, this is a post to skip, as it’s going to be about set design, lighting, props, signage, and ritual design, among other things.

Sol’s goals

Part of how we measure the efficacy of an experience is by checking whether it helps its user achieve their goals in the ways they would like them achieved. So let’s say that Sol’s goals are to take advantage of the service to have a good death, i.e. to pass painlessly and with dignity, and to have his belongings passed along according to his wishes. He wants psychological comfort as well, which in this case means helping him psychologically transition from the world he is leaving behind by setting up a liminal space for the ceremony, pointing toward notions of eternity and away from the horrible world he is leaving.

“People,” you say? Yeah, screw that. I’m out.

We are going to completely bypass the script question here about why Sol doesn’t bother to communicate to Thorn the Dark Secret in his goodbye note, but then does tell him when he happens to join him at the Thanatorium. That is what it is.

Sol’s experience

After Sol learns that his options are cannibalism or starvation, he makes the decision to die with dignity. To enact this wish, he dresses in his Sunday best, heads to the state-sponsored Thanatorium, officed in a low-rise building at the end of a wide street in downtown New York City.

Authors Islam Abohela and Noel Lavin insightfully note in their 2020 paper, The Height of Future Architecture: Significance of High versus Low Rise Architecture in Science Fiction Films, that the horizontality of this building contrasts earlier, vertical sci-fi visions of the cityscape as lofty and aspirational. In short, the building is in a horizontal repose suitable to its purpose. Further, the bright illumination spilling out from its frosted-glass doors onto the street helps to sell its next-world-ly promise, especially as the terminus of a dark road.

Initial greeting

At Sol’s approach a young worker opens the door and welcomes him. (How did she know of his approach, given the frosted glass? Let’s presume cameras, though we see no hint of this.)

With the door open, Sol feels the air conditioning pouring from inside and says, “It feels good.” She replies, “Yes, sir. Won’t you please come in?” He hesitates a moment with the gravity of it, but proceeds. Inside he walks through a turnstile and the greeter escorts him to one of the intake queues.

Worldbuilding question: The New York City of Soylent Green is oppressively hot and overcrowded. You would imagine that people would want to feel that refreshing cool air themselves, even if they weren’t there to suicide. I would expect people to be laying on the sidewalk there near the doors on the off-chance to feel a cool breeze. But the street leading to the Thanatorium is vacant. Why is this so? You might think well, it’s an authoritarian state, and curfew is probably enforced brutally. But then why is Sol allowed to just amble his way there? It would have been a nice beat to have seen Sol approached by an angry cop and challenged, only to have Sol point up the street to the Thanatorium, to which the cop softens and nods, allowing Sol to continue. This would have signaled that, despite curfew, the Thanatorium is open 24 hours a day, 7 days for “business.”

Intake

Taking a moment to appreciate the set design, the placid blues and non-descript “plop art” backdrops sell this space as a hospital rather than, say, an airport terminal, or church. It could have gone all “heavenly gate” but that would have been too soon in the patient experience, and lacked the personalized immersion that leads to…uh…the ecstasy meat (a gross, backworlded concept introduced in the beneficiaries post). The service keeps its powder dry to maximize that main event and thereby its output. So this design wins for being both familiar to the patients and effective for Soylent.

The film cuts away to show Thorn returning home to find Sol’s goodbye letter, and then running to the Thanatorium. When we cut back to Sol, he is in the middle of answering some questions by the intake staff, i.e. His favorite color and genre of music. Sol responds and the intake personnel marks his answers on a reusable plastic form. Before signing, Sol wants to confirm that the ceremony will last, “A full 20 minutes?”

“Certainly,” comes the reply, “Guaranteed.”

This scriptwriting moment bears a mention. This comes across as a negotiation, but what is being exchanged here? And what could Sol do with a guarantee when he won’t be there in case this mustache reneges on the deal? Nothing, of course, but it really sets up the transactional nature here. One’s death is so cheap in the world of Soylent Green that one can use it as a bargaining chip. Dark.

There’s a lot that we don’t get to examine in this intake experience because the scene is cut, but per Sol’s goals identified above, we have to imagine it would include questions about his beneficiaries and privacy. Additional questions appear in the text below.

Theater 11

The usher comes and retrieves Sol, making small talk and escorting him down halls, past the beneficiaries’ observation room, to “theater 11,” which is the death chamber to which he’s been assigned, with attendants waiting there standing aside a bed in the center of the room. The inclusion of “11” reminds us that there are many such theaters in the Thanatorium. It would have been nice for the beneficiaries only room to have had a similar number, i.e. “Observation 11: beneficiaries only,” linking the two together for the users and the audience.

We’ll get back to Sol’s experience in a moment, but first a note on the floor markings and the architecture.

I first thought the red line on the floor might have been wayfinding lines like you see in some hospitals. If it was a particularly busy day, and the patient ambulatory, the intake personnel could say, “Follow the red line on the floor to theater 11.” But, a glance at the scenes that precede this show that these markings are only present in the antechamber leading into the theater and the theater itself. So it serves as more of a decoration, a red line leading to a red circle in the middle of which is a white gray, and black circle. The end of the line in two senses.

This sense of the terminus is reinforced by the design of the room. The small passageway down which Sol walks joins with the more expansive theater, creating a sort of “reverse womb” implying a balance between the beginning and end of life. It’s not critical that patients pick up on any of this, of course, but all contributes to a sense of liminality; of interest to both Sol and Soylent.

So all good, but I wish the lighting here had echoed the approach to the building. It should have been a glowing pool of light at the end of a dark passageway, rather than the even overhead lighting reminiscent of a school cafeteria that we see in the film. Pools of light in the center combined with many flickering pinpoints of light at the periphery would have increased the sense of other-worldliness and unified the approach to the building with the entrance to the theater, creating a rhythm of self-similar spectacle. It also would have let the scale of the 180° screen become apparent only once the ceremony started, adding to its thrill and overwhelming scale.

The attendant behavior

In service design, the behavior of the frontstage staff is of particular concern, as humans are good at reading other humans for cues about unfamiliar things. In this case, the attendants are silent, wear beatific expressions, and move with a dance-like deliberateness throughout their parts. It is perhaps the most effective cue-of-transition for the patient. The outfits are a little goofy, but borrow semantically from western Christian liturgy, so are kind-of appropriate. If the patient were atheist or from a different religious tradition, other costumes with different signifiers would be more appropriate.

It’s also of note that not everyone is comfortable with being touched by strangers. It signals a warmth in the scene, but might feel threatening to some patients. Another question to add to the intake questionnaire.

Disrobing

Once Sol is in the theater, the attendants greet him with silent handshakes, lead him to the bed, and begin to help him disrobe. This segment bears many questions.

Why does he need to be naked?

I get why he is disrobed here, from Soylent’s perspective. I’ve never been a mortician, but it does seem that getting the clothes off of a living person would be easier than getting it off a dead person, why make the task harder for Soylent employees down the line? Just work it into the ceremony, some product manager says. And from Sol’s perspective, he’d like to see his clothes being taken away in a nice basket with some assurances that the clothes would be washed and given back to the community; an additional assurance that he’s doing a good, selfless thing in this world with dwindling resources.

But then there are the pants. Maybe it’s me, but there is not a dignified way to remove one’s pants around other, clothed, people. Did they help him out of his pants? Did he do that and just hand the clothes to them? Is he just in his underwear? All of it seems awkward.

I think the service could take a privacy clue from hospitals, public pools, and spas: provide a small room where a patient can undress themselves and switch into a robe. This would also be an opportunity to get a shower, which the movie demonstrates is a cherished luxury in the world of Soylent Green, another reward to lure citizens. Water is in short supply in the world of Soylent Green, but the corpses that are sent en masse to The Exchange for processing don’t get otherwise cleaned, so it would be another nice, hygienic worldbuilding hint.

In the scene, the disrobing is taken as a solemn moment, but Sol is distracted from thinking too hard about it by the appearance of an orange floodlight.

That orange floodlight

During the disrobing, a floodlight of Sol’s favorite color illuminates. I complained briefly about this in the prior post, but what’s causing this light to come on? The usher is back at intake, so it’s not him. Maybe the light is on a timer, but that seems hard for the attendants to manage against the other things that need to happen.

Also, why does it come on at this moment in the ceremony? It might be a deliberate distraction for Sol, meant to focus his attention on the meaning of the ceremony rather than the mundane disrobing, but if so, you might think that the light should illuminate before the disrobing begins. But recall that it’s only happenstance that Sol’s favorite color is the warm and flattering orange. If a patient’s favorite color happened to be blue—which is the most popular color around the world—it would grant everything in theater 11 a cool, detached appearance, and give the patient’s own skin a deathly pallor. Not great for the experience.

Even the second most favored colors aren’t much better. Red looks like danger to western audiences, purple is unflattering, and green looks alien and would be little on-the-nose for the theme. Apologies to my colorblind readers.

Much better would be to keep the custom-color flood light off until the overture begins—when the patient’s attention is not drawn to themselves but focused on the chamber around them—and illuminate it with the rise of the music, in response to the usher’s controls. This would maximize the impact of the color on Sol’s emotional state while not making his own skin and the attendants look off-putting.

Getting onto the bed

Once disrobed, the attendants help Sol onto the bed. How they do this is left off-screen, but it’s a non-trivial problem since as you can see in the screen shot, Sol is 5’7″ and the bed height is well above his waist. Hopefully there’s a set of retractable steps under the bed skirt that can make this accessible to Sol without his having to be hoisted up by the attendants, which would be undignified.

Hemlock

Once in bed, the attendants provide the “hemlock,” (which is what I’m calling the deadly draught they provide in homage to the death of Socrates) and Sol drinks.

We don’t see the glass in the room prior to its being handed to him, but I imagine since this is the point of no return, it bears some attention. Should it be waiting already poured, or should he watch it being poured? Should be pour it himself? If poured, should it be from a gold, porcelain, or glass pitcher? Should there be a tray? Where should all this be staged?

For materials, gold is a good funereal symbol for never tarnishing, but might be too tempting a theft target for poverty-stricken citizens. Stoneware has a nice connotation of being of-the-earth, but is a poor choice for being opaque and here implying its contents are something to be hidden. So I’d recommend a simple glass pitcher that emphasizes clarity. The Toyo pitcher shown below has no handle and so requires two hands to operate, granting a ceremonial, human feel to the act of pouring. While we’re at it, ditch the footed highball glass for a stange or zombie glass to match the pitcher’s simplicity. Have them sitting on an end table on a tray at the side of the bed in their own pool of light and have the attendant pour and hand the glass to the patient. When they depart the chamber one attendant can take the tray out with them for cleaning, and the other can push the end table back under the bed.

Another argument for delaying the floodlight until the overture is that light can change the apparent color of the drink. It just so happens that Sol’s orange flatters the amber color of the draught, but if his favorite color had been, say, red, it might have made the drink look like a wicked ink. Keep the floodlight off to keep the apparent color of the drink something pleasant and unthreatening.

Sol makes no expression in response to the taste of the hemlock, so we have no clue how it’s flavored, but it’s in everyone’s interest that it be palatable, if not pleasant. It would have been a nice touch at intake to ask him to select from a menu of favorite flavors as well, especially to hide the taste of whatever other drugs need to be mixed in.

Once Sol has imbibed the draught, he lies back on the wedge pillow and the attendants draw a sheet up to his chest.

As the orange floodlight dims to a candlelight whisper, Sol waits for the overture to begin as the attendants depart.

Overture

Alone at last, Sol is treated to an audio overture as the drugs work through his system. The music is the principal theme from the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathétique.” He stares up at the ceiling, bathed in his favorite color, listening to his favorite music unaware that things are about to become even more spectacular.

Cinerama

The overture complete (and, per my ecstasy meat theory, the MDMA and opiates have kicked in) the audio-visual presentation starts. The music changes to the first movement of Beethoven’s “Symphony #6 (The Pastoral),” and a very wide-angle video presentation begins on the wrap-around screen above him, starting with a verdant field of tulips blowing in a breeze.

The tiny angles in the screen edge hint that this is meant to work exactly like Cinerama with multiple projectors and stitched edges, though the lack of deformation and perspective in the images is all wrong.

It later transitions to images of fauna, other flora, wholesome livestock, and sunsets—all romantic scenes of a highly-selective-memory of Earth’s heyday. It’s important to remember that audiences in 1973 may have heard of a Cinerama display like this, but few of them had seen it. And the 180+° screen seen in the film dwarfs the original Cinerama 2.65:1 display ratio. So though folks today may yawn at this in comparison to IMAX or Oculus AR displays, at the time this would have seemed very sci-fi.

From our vantage point, it all seems a little cruel, bathing Sol in scenes of what he cannot have and what for him will never be, but maybe it points at an afterlife where the things you recall fondly will be yours again, in abundance. (Hey that seems like a formula for every afterlife story.) Mixed with the drugs in Sol’s system, it would help flood his mind and body with euphoria and all the pleasant neurotransmitters that entails.

I minimize this gif because it is so freaking distracting, as it would be to users.

At a few minutes into the presentation, the SPEAKING PERMITTED light of the beneficiaries interface begins blinking, and the patient is able to talk to their loved ones. This would interrupt the spectacle of the display, but add a flood of additional emotions (and thereby hormones) from heartfelt declarations of love and farewell. Immediately afterward “Morning Mood” from Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite #1” plays as biophilic videos play: Alpine mountainscapes with grazing donkeys, tarns with floral banks. Finally it segues to scenes depicting the end-of-a-day: A sunset over waves crashing on the black rocks of a pristine West Coast beach, another sun sets through gaps in swiftly drifting clouds.

The screen fades to black as “Aase’s Death” plays from the “Peer Gynt Suite.” In the film, this is the point where Sol shares the Dark Secret and tells Thorn he must go the Exchange and provide proof to the elders. (Ugh. Screenwriters, again, if this was so important, why did he wait until this moment—which he was not sure would come—to convey this information? It makes no sense. But I digress.)

Psst…did you know the namesake of the James Webb telescope was a filthy homophobe? Now you do.

The camera is all close up in their faces for this final beat, so we don’t know what is playing on the screen, but I’d like to think it’s images of stars and nebulae to evoke not just the end of a terrestrial day, but a connection to things that by comparison seem eternal, everlasting.

Communication signals

The dialogue makes me realize another signal is missing for Sol, that is, how does he know when the audio channel to the observation room is open? Now, it would be nice if the audio channel were tied to the state of the viewing portal. That is, audio is connected when the portal is open and they can see each other; and off when the portal is closed. But, we know that Soylent wants the usher to have control of the channels to silence either party at will, so in lieu of that, let’s give some signal to Sol near the observation window to let him know when the audio channel is open. It should look akin to the interface on the other side in the observation room, but it would have to be redesigned for a 10-foot rather than 2-foot experience. It would also have to not be distracting to the patient when their attention is on the cinerama, so a dim, backlit visual might be enough for sighted users. Separate and custom-designed rooms should be built for differently abled patients.

After his plea to Thorn, Sol finally passes, marking the end of his experience with the Thanatorium.

All told, Sol’s experience suits his goals fairly well. He wants a sense of dignity, spectacle, importance, connection to his loved one, and otherworldliness that he receives. There are little things to fix throughout, as mentioned in the text.

My biggest criticism is of being physically separated from loved ones, when a held hand might take the edge off of the fear of death and add a nice dose of oxytocin to the result, but Soylent’s interest is more about maximizing control of the end product, so this, full of risk, would not make it into the final design.

The Thanatorium: A beneficiary’s experience

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The thanatorium is a speculative service for assisted suicide in Soylent Green. Suicide and death are not easy topics and I will do my best to address them seriously. Let me first take a moment to direct anyone who is considering or dealing with suicide to please stop reading this and talk to someone about it. I am unqualified to address—and this blog is not the place to work through—such issues.

There are four experiences to look at in the interface and service design of the Thanatorium: The patient, their beneficiaries, the usher, and the attendants to the patient. This post is about the least complicated of the bunch, the beneficiaries.

Thorn’s experience

We have to do a little extrapolation here because the way we see it in the movie is not the way we imagine it would work normally. What we see is Thorn entering the building and telling staff there to take him to Sol. He is escorted to an observation room labeled “beneficiaries only” by an usher. (Details about the powerful worldbuilding present in this label can be found in the prior post.) Sol has already drunk the “hemlock” drink by the time Thorn enters this room, so Sol is already dying and the robed room attendants have already left.

Aaand I just noticed that the walls are the same color as the Soylent. Ewww.

This room has a window view of the “theater” proper, with an interface mounted just below the window. At the top of this interface is a mounted microphone. Directly below is an intercom speaker beside a large status alert labeled SPEAKING PERMITTED. When we first see the panel this indicator is off. At the bottom is a plug for headphones to the left, a slot for a square authorization key, and in the middle, a row of square, backlit toggle buttons labeled PORTAL, EFFECTS, CHAMBER 2, AUDIO, VISUAL, and CHAMBER 1. When the Sol is mid-show, EFFECTS and VISUAL are the only buttons that are lit.

When the usher closes the viewing window, explaining that it’s against policy for beneficiaries to view the ceremony, Thorn…uh…chokes him in order to persuade him to let him override the policy.

Persuasion.

“Persuaded,” the usher puts his authorization key back in the slot. The window opens again. Thorn observes the ceremony in awe, having never seen the beautiful Earth of Sol’s youth. He mutters “I didn’t know” and “How could I?” as he watches. Sol tries weakly to tell Thorn something, but the speaker starts glitching, with the SPEAKING PERMITTED INDICATOR flashing on and off. Thorn, helpfully, pounds his fist on the panel and demands that the usher do something to fix it. The user gives Thorn wired earbuds and Thorn continues his conversation. (Extradiegetically, is this so they didn’t have to bother with the usher’s overhearing the conversation? I don’t understand this beat.) The SPEAKING PERMITTED light glows a solid red and they finish their conversation.

Yes, that cable jumps back and forth like that in the movie during the glitch. It was a simpler time.

Sol dies, and the lights come up in the chamber. Two assistants come to push the gurney along a track through a hidden door. Some mechanism in the floor catches the gurney, and the cadaver is whisked away from Thorn’s sight.

Regular experience?

So that’s Thorns corrupt, thuggish cop experience of the thanatorium. Let’s now make some educated guesses about what this might imply for the regular, non-thug experience for beneficiaries.

  1. The patient and beneficiaries enter the building and greeted by staff.
  2. They wait in queue in the lobby for their turn.
  3. The patient is taken by attendants to the “theater” and the beneficiaries taken by the usher to the observation room.
  4. Beneficiaries witness the drinking of the hemlock.
  5. The patient has a moment to talk with the beneficiaries and say their final farewells.
  6. The viewing window is closed as the patient watches the “cinerama” display and dies. The beneficiaries wait quietly in the observation room with the usher.
  7. The viewing window is opened as they watch the attendants wheel the body into the portal.
  8. They return to the lobby to sign some documents for benefits and depart.

So, some UX questions/backworlding

We have to backworld some of the design rationales involved to ground critique and design improvements. After all, design is the optimization of a system for a set of effects, and we want to be certain about what effects we’re targeting. So…

Why would beneficiaries be separated from the patient?

I imagine that the patient might take comfort from holding the hands or being near their loved ones (even if that set didn’t perfectly overlap with their beneficiaries). So why is there a separate viewing room? There are a handful of reasons I can imagine, only one of which is really satisfying.

Maybe it’s to prevent the spread of disease? Certainly given our current multiple pandemics, we understand the need for physical separation in a medical setting. But the movie doesn’t make any fuss about disease being a problem (though with 132,000 people crammed into every square mile of the New York City metropolitan area you’d figure it would be), and in Sol’s case, there’s zero evidence in the film that he’s sick. Why does the usher resist the request from Thorn if this was the case? And why wouldn’t the attendants be in some sort of personal protective gear?

Maybe it’s to hide the ugly facts of dying? Real death is more disconcerting to see than most people are familiar with (take the death rattle as one example) and witnessing it might discourage other citizens from opting-in for the same themselves. But, we see that Sol just passes peacefully from the hemlock drink, so this isn’t really at play here.

Maybe it’s to keep the cinerama experience hidden? It’s showing pictures of an old, bountiful earth that—in the diegesis—no longer exists. Thorn says in the movie that he’s too young to know what “old earth” was like, so maybe this society wants to prevent false hope? Or maybe to prevent rioting, should the truth of How Far We’ve Fallen get out? Or maybe it’s considered a reward for patients opting-in to suicide, thereby creating a false scarcity to further incentivize people to opt-in themselves? None of this is super compelling, and we have to ask, why does the usher give in and open the viewport if any of this was the case?

That blue-green in the upper left of this still is the observation booth.

So, maybe it’s to prevent beneficiaries from trying to interfere with the suicide. This society would want impediments against last-minute shouts of, “Wait! Don’t do it!” There’s some slight evidence against this, as when Sol is drinking the Hemlock, the viewing port is wide open, so beneficiaries might have pounded on the window if this was standard operating procedure. But its being open might have been an artifact of Sol’s having walked in without any beneficiaries. Maybe the viewport is ordinarily closed until after the hemlock, opened for final farewells, closed for the cinerama, and opened again to watch as the body is sped away?

Ecstasy Meat

This rationale supports another, more horrible argument. What if the reason is that Soylent (the company) wants the patient to have an uninterrupted dopamine and seratonin hit at the point of dying, so those neurotransmitters are maximally available in the “meat” before processing? (Like how antibiotics get passed along to meat-eaters in industrialized food today.) It would explain why they ask Sol for his favorite color in the lobby. Yes it is for his pleasure, but not for humane reasons. It’s so he can be at his happiest at the point of death. Dopamine and seratonin would make the resulting product, Soylent green, more pleasurable and addictive to consumers. That gives an additional rationale as to why beneficiaries would be prevented from speaking—it would distract from patients’ intense, pleasurable experience of the cinerama.

A quickly-comped up speculative banner ad reading “You want to feel GOOD GOOD. Load up on Soylent Green today!”
Now, with more Clarendon.

For my money, the “ecstasy meat” rationale reinforces and makes worse the movie’s Dark Secret, so I’m going to go with that. Without this rationale, I’d say rewrite the scene so beneficiaries are in the room with the patient. But with this rationale, let’s keep the rooms separate.

Beneficiary interfaces

Which leads us to rethinking this interface.

Beneficiary interfaces

A first usability note is that the SPEAKING PERMITTED indicator is very confusing. The white text on a black background looks like speaking is, currently, permitted. But then the light behind it illuminates and I guess, then speaking is permitted? But wait, the light is red, so does that mean it’s not permitted, or is? And then adding to the confusion, it blinks. Is that the glitching, or some third state? Can we send this to its own interface thanatorium? So to make this indicator more usable, we could do a couple of things.

  • Put a ring of lights around the microphone and grill. When illuminated, speaking is permitted. This presumes that the audience can infer what these lights mean, and isn’t accessible to unsighted users, but I don’t think the audio glitch is a major plot point that needs that much reinforcing; see above. If the execs just have to have it crystal clear, then you could…
  • Have two indicators, one reading SPEAKING PERMITTED and another reading SILENCE PLEASE, with one or the other always lit. If you had to do it on the cheap, they don’t need to be backlit panels, but just two labeled indicator lamps would do.

And no effing blinking.

Thorn voice: NO EFFING BLINKING!

I think part of the affective purpose of the interface is to show how cold and mechanistic the thanatorium’s treatment of people are. To keep that, you could add another indicator light on the panel labeled somewhat cryptically, PATIENT. Have it illuminated until Sol passes, and then have a close up shot when it fades, indicating his death.

Ah, yes, good to have a reminder that’s why he’s a critic and not a working FUI designer.

A note on art direction. It would be in Soylent’s and our-real-world interest to make this interface feel as humane as possible. Maybe less steel and backlit toggles? Then again, this world is operating on fumes, so they would make do with what’s available. So this should also feel a little more strung together, maybe with some wires sticking out held together with electrical tape and tape holding the audio jack in place.

Last note on the accommodations. What are the beneficiaries supposed to do while the patient is watching the cinerama display? Stand there and look awkward? Let’s get some seats in here and pipe the patient’s selection of music in. That way they can listen and think of the patient in the next room.

If you really want it to feel extradiegetically heartless, put a clock on the wall by the viewing window that beneficiaries can check.

Once we simplify this panel and make the room make design sense, we have to figure out what to do with the usher’s interface elements that we’ve just removed, and that’s the next post.

Sci-fi Spacesuits: Moving around

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Whatever it is, it ain’t going to construct, observe, or repair itself. In addition to protection and provision, suits must facilitate the reason the wearer has dared to go out into space in the first place.

One of the most basic tasks of extravehicular activity (EVA) is controlling where the wearer is positioned in space. The survey shows several types of mechanisms for this. First, if your EVA never needs you to leave the surface of the spaceship, you can go with mountaineering gear or sticky feet. (Or sticky hands.) We can think of maneuvering through space as similar to piloting a craft, but the outputs and interfaces have to be made wearable, like wearable control panels. We might also expect to see some tunnel in the sky displays to help with navigation. We’d also want to see some AI safeguard features, to return the spacewalker to safety when things go awry. (Narrator: We don’t.)

Mountaineering gear

In Stowaway (2021) astronauts undertake unplanned EVAs with carabiners and gear akin to mountaineers use. This makes some sense, though even this equipment needs to be modified for use by astronauts’ thick gloves.

Stowaway (2021) Drs Kim and Levinson prepare to scale to the propellant tank.

Sticky feet (and hands)

Though it’s not extravehicular, I have to give a shout out to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), where we see a flight attendant manage their position in the microgravity with special shoes that adhere to the floor. It’s a lovely example of a competent Hand Wave. We don’t need to know how it works because it says, right there, “Grip shoes.” Done. Though props to the actress Heather Downham, who had to make up a funny walk to illustrate that it still isn’t like walking on earth.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1969)
Pan Am: “Thank god we invented the…you know, whatever shoes.”

With magnetic boots, seen in Destination Moon, the wearer simply walks around and manages the slight awkwardness of having to pull a foot up with extra force, and have it snap back down on its own.

Destination Moon (1950): Jim Barnes tests his magnetic boots.

Battlestar Galactica added magnetic handgrips to augment the control provided by magnetized boots. With them, Sergeant Mathias is able to crawl around the outside of an enemy vessel, inspecting it. While crawling, she holds grip bars mounted to circles that contain the magnets. A mechanism for turning the magnet off is not seen, but like these portable electric grabbers, it could be as simple as a thumb button.

Battlestar Galactica (2008, Season 4, Episode 5, “The Road Less Traveled”): Sergeant Erin Mathias inspects the damaged cylon raider for tracking devices.

Iron Man also had his Mark 50 suit form stabilizing suction cups before cutting a hole in the hull of the Q-Ship.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

In the electromagnetic version of boots, seen in Star Trek: First Contact, the wearer turns the magnets on with a control strapped to their thigh. Once on, the magnetization seems to be sensitive to the wearer’s walk, automatically lessening when the boot is lifted off. This gives the wearer something of a natural gait. The magnetism can be turned off again to be able to make microgravity maneuvers, such as dramatically leaping away from Borg minions.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Star Trek: Discovery also included this technology, but with what appears to be a gestural activation and a cool glowing red dots on the sides and back of the heel. The back of each heel has a stack of red lights that count down to when they turn off, as, I guess, a warning to anyone around them that they’re about to be “air” borne.

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–) S01E01, “The Vulcan Hello”
Ensign Burnham takes a step out onto the hull before lifting off toward the mysterious beacon.

Quick “gotcha” aside: neither Destination Moon nor Star Trek: First Contact bothers to explain how characters are meant to be able to kneel while wearing magnetized boots. Yet this very thing happens in both films.

Destination Moon (1950): Kneeling on the surface of the spaceship.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996): Worf rises from operating the maglock to defend himself.

Controlled Propellant

If your extravehicular task has you leaving the surface of the ship and moving around space, you likely need a controlled propellant. This is seen only a few times in the survey.

In the film Mission to Mars, the manned mobility unit, or MMU, seen in the film is based loosely on NASA’s MMU. A nice thing about the device is that unlike the other controlled propellant interfaces, we can actually see some of the interaction and not just the effect. The interfaces are subtly different in that the Mission to Mars spacewalkers travel forward and backward by angling the handgrips forward and backward rather than with a joystick on an armrest. This seems like a closer mapping, but also seems more prone to error by accidental touching or bumping into something.

Mission to Mars (2000): Woody inspects the craft for the leak.

The plus side is an interface that is much more cinegenic, where the audience is more clearly able to see the cause and effect of the spacewalker’s interactions with the device.

Mission to Mars (2000): The crew performs a daring EVA.

If you have propellent in a Moh’s 4 or 5 film, you might need to acknowledge that propellant is a limited resource. Over the course of the same (heartbreaking) scene shown above, we see an interface where one spacewalker monitors his fuel, and another where a spacewalker realizes that she has traveled as far as she can with her MMU and still return to safety.

Mission to Mars (2000): Woody sees that he’s out of fuel.
Mission to Mars (2000): Terry sees that she cannot continue her rescue of Woody.

For those wondering, Michael Burnham’s flight to the mysterious signal in that pilot uses propellant, but is managed and monitored by controllers on Discovery, so it makes sense that we don’t see any maneuvering interfaces for her. We could dive in and review the interfaces the bridge crew uses (and try to map that onto a spacesuit), but we only get snippets of these screens and see no controls.

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–) S01E01, “The Vulcan Hello”

Iron Man’s suits employ some Phlebotinum propellant that lasts for ever, can fit inside his tailored suit, and are powerful enough to achieve escape velocity.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

All-in-all, though sci-fi seems to understand the need for characters to move around in spacesuits, very little attention is given to the interfaces that enable it. The Mission to Mars MMU is the only one with explicit attention paid to it, and that’s quite derived from NASA models. It’s an opportunity for film makers should the needs of the plot allow, to give this topic some attention.

Sci-fi Spacesuits: Biological needs

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Spacesuits must support the biological functioning of the astronaut. There are probably damned fine psychological reasons to not show astronauts their own biometric data while on stressful extravehicular missions, but there is the issue of comfort. Even if temperature, pressure, humidity, and oxygen levels are kept within safe ranges by automatic features of the suit, there is still a need for comfort and control inside of that range. If the suit is to be warn a long time, there must be some accommodation for food, water, urination, and defecation. Additionally, the medical and psychological status of the wearer should be monitored to warn of stress states and emergencies.

Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t reveal any interfaces being used to control temperature, pressure, or oxygen levels. There are some for low oxygen level warnings and testing conditions outside the suit, but these are more outputs than interfaces where interactions take place.

Mission to Mars (2000), McConnell verifies that the team can remove their helmets.

There are also no nods to toilet necessities, though in fairness Hollywood eschews this topic a lot.

The one example of sustenance seen in the survey appears in Sunshine, we see Captain Kaneda take a sip from his drinking tube while performing a dangerous repair of the solar shields. This is the only food or drink seen in the survey, and it is a simple mechanical interface, held in place by material strength in such a way that he needs only to tilt his head to take a drink.

Sunshine (2007): Truman asks spacewalker Shelby to calm down since his vital signs are stressed.

Similarly, in Sunshine, when Capa and Kaneda perform EVA to repair broken solar shields, Cassie tells Capa to relax because he is using up too much oxygen. We see a brief view of her bank of screens that include his biometrics.

Sunshine (2007): Cassie warns Capa that he’s using a lot of oxygen.

Remote monitoring of people in spacesuits is common enough to be a trope, but has been discussed already in the Medical chapter in Make It So, for more on biometrics in sci-fi.

Crowe’s medical monitor in Aliens (1986).

There are some non-interface biological signals for observers. In the movie Alien, as the landing party investigates the xenomorph eggs, we can see that the suit outgases something like steam—slower than exhalations, but regular. Though not presented as such, the suit certainly confirms for any onlooker that the wearer is breathing and the suit functioning.

Alien (1979): The away team’s suit exhales as they walk the alien wreckage.
Look for the white plume in the left image and a dark plume on the right.

Given that sci-fi technology glows, it is no surprise to see that lots and lots of spacesuits have glowing bits on the exterior. Though nothing yet in the survey tells us what these lights might be for, it stands to reason that one purpose might be as a simple and immediate line-of-sight status indicator. When things are glowing steadily, it means the life support functions are working smoothly. A blinking red alert on the surface of a spacesuit could draw attention to the individual with the problem, and make finding them easier.

The Fifth Element (1997): Mondoshawan spacesuits have tiny lights along the exterior.

Emergency deployment

One nifty thing that sci-fi can do (but we can’t yet in the real world) is deploy biology-protecting tech at the touch of a button. We see this in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Starlord’s helmet.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2012) Peter Starlord puts his Helmet on Gamora in space outside the Kyln.

If such tech was available, you’d imagine that it would have some smart sensors to know when it must automatically deploy (sudden loss of oxygen or dangerous impurities in the air), but we don’t see it. But given this speculative tech, one can imagine it working for a whole spacesuit and not just a helmet. It might speed up scenes like this.

What do we see in the real world?

Are there real-world controls that sci-fi is missing? Let’s turn to NASA’s space suits to compare.

The Primary Life-Support System (PLSS) is the complex spacesuit subsystem that provides the life support to the astronaut, and biomedical telemetry back to control. Its main components are the closed-loop oxygen-ventilation system for cycling and recycling oxygen, the moisture (sweat and breath) removal system, and the feedwater system for cooling.

The only “biology” controls that the spacewalker has for these systems are a few on the Display and Control Module (DCM) on the front of the suit. They are the cooling control valve, the oxygen actuator slider, and the fan switch. Only the first is explicitly to control comfort. Other systems, such as pressure, are designed to maintain ideal conditions automatically. Other controls are used for contingency systems for when the automatic systems fail.

Hey, isn’t the text on this thing backwards? Yes, because astronauts can’t look down from inside their helmets, and must view these controls via a wrist mirror. More on this later.

The suit is insulated thoroughly enough that the astronaut’s own body heats the interior, even in complete shade. Because the astronaut’s body constantly adds heat, the suit must be cooled. To do this, the suit cycles water through a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, which has a fine network of tubes held closely to the astronaut’s skin. Water flows through these tubes and past a sublimator that cools the water with exposure to space. The astronaut can increase or decrease the speed of this flow and thereby the amount to which his body is cooled, by the cooling control valve, a recessed radial valve with fixed positions between 0 (the hottest) and 10 (the coolest), located on the front of the Display Control Module.

The spacewalker does not have EVA access to her biometric data. Sensors measure oxygen consumption and electrocardiograph data and broadcast it to the Mission Control surgeon, who monitors it on her behalf. So whatever the reason is, if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for the movies.

Back to sci-fi

So, we do see temperature and pressure controls on suits in the real world, which underscores their absence in sci-fi. But, if there hasn’t been any narrative or plot reason for such things to appear in a story, we should not expect them.

Wakandan Med Table

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When Agent Ross is shot in the back during Klaue’s escape from the Busan field office, T’Challa stuffs a kimoyo bead into the wound to staunch the bleeding, but the wounds are still serious enough that the team must bring him back to Wakanda for healing. They float him to Shuri’s lab on a hover-stretcher.

Here Shuri gets to say the juicy line, “Great. Another white boy for us to fix. This is going to be fun.”
Sorry about the blurry screen shot, but this is the most complete view of the bay.

The hover-stretcher gets locked into place inside a bay. The bay is a small room in the center of Shuri’s lab, open on two sides. The walls are covered in a gray pattern suggesting a honeycomb. A bas-relief volumetric projection displays some medical information about the patient like vital signs and a subtle fundus image of the optic nerve.

Shuri holds her hand flat and raises it above the patient’s chest. A volumetric display of 9 of his thoracic vertebrae rises up in response. One of the vertebrae is highlighted in a bright red. A section of the wall display displays the same information in 2D, cyan with orange highlights. That display section slides out from the wall to draw observer’s attentions. Hexagonal tiles flip behind the display for some reason, but produce no change in the display.

Shuri reaches her hands up to the volumetric vertebrae, pinches her forefingers and thumbs together, and pull them apart. In response, the space between the vertebrae expands, allowing her to see the top and bottom of the body of the vertebra.

She then turns to the wall display, and reading something there, tells the others that he’ll live. Her attention is pulled away with the arrival of Wakabe, bringing news of Killmonger. We do not see her initiate a treatment in the scene. We have to presume that she did it between cuts. (There would have to be a LOT of confidence in an AI’s ability to diagnose and determine treatment before they would let Griot do that without human input.)

We’ll look more closely at the hover-stretcher display in a moment, but for now let’s pause and talk about the displays and the interaction of this beat.

A lab is not a recovery room

This doesn’t feel like a smart environment to hold a patient. We can bypass a lot of the usual hospital concerns of sterilization (it’s a clean room) or readily-available equipment (since they are surrounded by programmable vibranium dust controlled by an AGI) or even risk of contamination (something something AI). I’m mostly thinking about the patient having an environment that promotes healing: Natural light, quiet or soothing music, plants, furnishing, and serene interiors. Having him there certainly means that Shuri’s team can keep an eye on him, and provide some noise that may act as a stimulus, but don’t they have actual hospital rooms in Wakanda? 

Why does she need to lift it?

The VP starts in his chest, but why? If it had started out as a “translucent skin” illusion, like we saw in Lost in Space (1998, see below), then that might make sense. She would want to lift it to see it in isolation from the distracting details of the body. But it doesn’t start this way, it starts embedded within him?!

The “translucent skin” display from Lost in Space (1998)

It’s a good idea to have a representation close to the referent, to make for easy comparison between them. But to start the VP within his opaque chest just doesn’t make sense.

This is probably the wrong gesture

In the gestural interfaces chapter of  Make It So, I described a pidgin that has been emerging in sci-fi which consisted of 7 “words.” The last of these is “Pinch and Spread to Scale.” Now, there is nothing sacred about this gestural language, but it has echoes in the real world as well. For one example, Google’s VR painting app Tilt Brush uses “spread to scale.” So as an increasingly common norm, it should only be violated with good reason. In Black Panther, Shuri uses spread to mean “spread these out,” even though she starts the gesture near the center of the display and pulls out at a 45° angle. This speaks much more to scaling than to spreading. It’s a mismatch and I can’t see a good reason for it. Even if it’s “what works for her,” gestural idiolects hinder communities of practice, and so should be avoided.

Better would have been pinching on one end of the spine and hooking her other index finger to spread it apart without scaling. The pinch is quite literal for “hold” and the hook quite literal for “pull.” This would let scale be scale, and “hook-pull” to mean “spread components along an axis.”

Model from https://justsketch.me/

If we were stuck with the footage of Shuri doing the scale gesture, then it would have made more sense to scale the display, and fade the white vertebrae away so she could focus on the enlarged, damaged one. She could then turn it with her hand to any arbitrary orientation to examine it.

An object highlight is insufficient

It’s quite helpful for an interface that can detect anomalies to help focus a user’s attention there. The red highlight for the damaged vertebrae certainly helps draw attention. Where’s the problem? Ah, yes. There’s the problem. But it’s more helpful for the healthcare worker to know the nature of the damage, what the diagnosis is, to monitor the performance of the related systems, and to know how the intervention is going. (I covered these in the medical interfaces chapter of Make It So, if you want to read more.) So yes, we can see which vertebra is damaged, but what is the nature of that damage? A slipped disc should look different than a bone spur, which should look different than one that’s been cracked or shattered from a bullet. The thing-red display helps for an instant read in the scene, but fails on close inspection and would be insufficient in the real world.

This is not directly relevant to the critique, but interesting that spinal VPs have been around since 1992. Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Ethics” (Season 5, Episode 16).

Put critical information near the user’s locus of attention

Why does Shuri have to turn and look at the wall display at all? Why not augment the volumetric projection with the data that she needs? You might worry that it could obscure the patient (and thereby hinder direct observations) but with an AGI running the show, it could easily position those elements to not occlude her view.

Compare this display, which puts a waveform directly adjacent to the brain VP. Firefly, “Ariel” (Episode 9, 2002).

Note that Shuri is not the only person in the room interested in knowing the state of things, so a wall display isn’t bad, but it shouldn’t be the only augmentation.

Lastly, why does she need to tell the others that Ross will live? if there was signifcant risk of his death, there should be unavoidable environmental signals. Klaxons or medical alerts. So unless we are to believe T’Challa has never encountered a single medical emergency before (even in media), this is a strange thing for her to have to say. Of course we understand she’s really telling us in the audience that we don’t need to wonder about this plot development any more, but it would be better, diegetically, if she had confirmed the time-to-heal, like, “He should be fine in a few hours.”

Alternatively, it would be hilarious turnabout if the AI Griot had simply not been “trained” on data that included white people, and “could not see him,” which is why she had to manually manage the diagnosis and intervention, but that would have massive impact on the remote piloting and other scenes, so isn’t worth it. Probably.

Thoughts toward a redesign

So, all told, this interface and interaction could be much better fit-to-purpose. Clarify the gestural language. Lose the pointless flipping hexagons. Simplify the wall display for observers to show vitals, diagnosis and intervention, as well as progress toward the goal. Augment the physician’s projection with detailed, contextual data. And though I didn’t mention it above, of course the bone isn’t the only thing damaged, so show some of the other damaged tissues, and some flowing, glowing patterns to show where healing is being done along with a predicted time-to-completion.

Stretcher display

Later, when Ross is fully healed and wakes up, we see a shot of of the med table from above. Lots of cyan and orange, and *typography shudder* stacked type. Orange outlines seem to indicate controls, tough they bear symbols rather than full labels, which we know is better for learnability and infrequent reuse. (Linguist nerds: Yes, Wakandan is alphabetic rather than logographic.)

These feel mostly like FUIgetry, with the exception of a subtle respiration monitor on Ross’ left. But it shows current state rather than tracked over time, so still isn’t as helpful as it could be.

Then when Ross lifts his head, the hexagons begin to flip over, disabling the display. What? Does this thing only work when the patient’s head is in the exact right space? What happens when they’re coughing, or convulsing? Wouldn’t a healthcare worker still be interested in the last-recorded state of things? This “instant-off” makes no sense. Better would have been just to let the displays fade to a gray to indicate that it is no longer live data, and to have delayed the fade until he’s actually sitting up.

All told, the Wakandan medical interfaces are the worst of the ones seen in the film. Lovely, and good for quick narrative hit, but bad models for real-world design, or even close inspection within the world of Wakanda.

MLK Day Matters

Each post in the Black Panther review is followed by actions that you can take to support black lives.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Normally there would be huge gatherings and public speeches about his legacy and the current state of civil rights. But the pandemic is still raging, and with the Capitol in Washington, D.C. having seen just last week an armed insurrection by supporters of outgoing and pouty loser Donald Trump, (in case that WP article hasn’t been moved yet, here’s the post under its watered-down title) worries about additional racist terrorism and violence.

So today we celebrate virtually, by staying at home, re-experiening his speeches and letters, and listening to the words of black leaders and prominent thinkers all around us, reminding us of the arc of the moral universe, and all the work it takes to bend it toward justice.

https://twitter.com/Wolven/status/1351242631523799046?s=20

With the Biden team taking the reins on Wednesday, and Kamala Harris as our first female Vice President of color, things are looking brighter than they have in 4 long, terrible years. But Trump would have gotten nowhere if there hadn’t been a voting block and party willing to indulge his racist fascism. There’s still much more to do to dismantle systemic racism in the country and around the world. Let’s read, reflect, and use whatever platforms and resources we are privileged to have, act.

Who did it better? Santa Claus edition

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I presume my readership are adults. I honestly cannot imagine this site has much to offer the 3-to-8-year-old. That said, if you are less than 8.8 years old, be aware that reading this will land you FIRMLY on the naughty list. Leave before it’s too late. Oooh, look! Here’s something interesting for you.

For those who celebrate Yule (and the very hybridized version of the holiday that I’ll call Santa-Christmas to distinguish it from Jesus-Christmas or Horus-Christmas), it’s that one time of year where we watch holiday movies. Santa features in no small number of them, working against the odds to save Christmas and Christmas spirit from something that threatens it. Santa accomplishes all that he does by dint of holiday magic, but increasingly, he has magic-powered technology to help him. These technologies are different for each movie in which they appear, with different sci-fi interfaces, which raises the question: Who did it better?

Unraveling this stands to be even more complicated than usual sci-fi fare.

  • These shows are largely aimed at young children, who haven’t developed the critical thinking skills to doubt the core premise, so the makers don’t have much pressure to present wholly-believable worlds. The makers also enjoy putting in some jokes for adults that are non-diegetic and confound analysis.
  • Despite the fact that these magical technologies are speculative just as in sci-fi, makers cannot presume that their audience are sci-fi fans who are familiar with those tropes. And things can’t seem too technical.
  • The sci in this fi is magical, which allows makers to do all-sorts of hand-wavey things about how it’s doing what it’s doing.
  • Many of the choices are whimsical and serve to reinforce core tenets of the Santa Claus mythos rather than any particular story or worldbuilding purpose.

But complicated-ness has rarely cowed this blog’s investigations before, why let a little thing like holiday magic do it now?

Ho-Ho-hubris!

A Primer on Santa

I have readers from all over the world. If you’re from a place that does not celebrate the Jolly Old Elf, a primer should help. And if you’re from a non-USA country, your Saint Nick mythos will be similar but not the same one that these movies are based on, so a clarification should help. To that end, here’s what I would consider the core of it.

Santa Claus is a magical, jolly, heavyset old man with white hair, mustache, and beard who lives at the North Pole with his wife Ms. Claus. The two are almost always caucasian. He can alternately be called Kris Kringle, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, or Klaus. The Clark Moore poem calls him a “jolly old elf.” He is aware of the behavior of children, and tallies their good and bad behavior over the year, ultimately landing them on the “naughty” or “nice” list. Santa brings the nice ones presents. (The naughty ones are canonically supposed to get coal in their stockings though in all my years I have never heard of any kids actually getting coal in lieu of presents.) Children also hang special stockings, often on a mantle, to be filled with treats or smaller presents. Adults encourage children to be good in the fall to ensure they get presents. As December approaches, Children write letters to Santa telling him what presents they hope for. Santa and his elves read the letters and make all the requested toys by hand in a workshop. Then the evening of 24 DEC, he puts all the toys in a large sack, and loads it into a sleigh led by 8 flying reindeer. Most of the time there is a ninth reindeer up front with a glowing red nose named Rudolph. He dresses in a warm red suit fringed with white fur, big black boots, thick black belt, and a stocking hat with a furry ball at the end. Over the evening, as children sleep, he delivers the presents to their homes, where he places them beneath the Christmas tree for them to discover in the morning. Families often leave out cookies and milk for Santa to snack on, and sometimes carrots for the reindeer. Santa often tries to avoid detection for reasons that are diegetically vague.

There is no single source of truth for this mythos, though the current core text might be the 1823 C.E. poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore. Visually, Santa’s modern look is often traced back to the depictions by Civil War cartoonist Thomas Nast, which the Coca-Cola Corporation built upon for their holiday advertisements in 1931.

Both these illustrations are by Nast.

There are all sorts of cultural conversations to have about the normalizing a magical panopticon, what effect hiding the actual supply chain has, and asking for what does perpetuating this myth train children; but for now let’s stick to evaluating the interfaces in terms of Santa’s goals.

Santa’s goals

Given all of the above, we can say that the following are Santa’s goals.

  • Sort kids by behavior as naughty or nice
    • Many tellings have him observing actions directly
    • Manage the lists of names, usually on separate lists
  • Manage letters
    • Reading letters
    • Sending toy requests to the workshop
    • Storing letters
  • Make presents
  • Travel to kids’ homes
    • Find the most-efficient way there
    • Control the reindeer
    • Maintain air safety
      • Avoid air obstacles
    • Find a way inside and to the tree
    • Enjoy the cookies / milk
  • Deliver all presents before sunrise
  • For each child:
    • Know whether they are naughty or nice
    • If nice, match the right toy to the child
    • Stage presents beneath the tree
  • Avoid being seen

We’ll use these goals to contextualize the Santa interfaces against.

This is the Worst Santa, but the image is illustrative of the weather challenges.

Typical Challenges

Nearly every story tells of Santa working with other characters to save Christmas. (The metaphor that we have to work together to make Christmas happen is appreciated.) The challenges in the stories can be almost anything, but often include…

  • Inclement weather (usually winter, but Santa is a global phenomenon)
  • Air safety
    • Air obstacles (Planes, helicopters, skyscrapers)
  • Ingress/egress into homes
  • Home security systems / guard dogs

The Contenders

Imdb.com lists 847 films tagged with the keyword “santa claus,” which is far too much to review. So I looked through “best of” lists (two are linked below) and watched those films for interfaces. There weren’t many. I even had to blend CGI and live action shows, which I’m normally hesitant to do. As always, if you know of any additional shows that should be considered, please mention it in the comments.

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-christmas-movies/https://screenrant.com/best-santa-claus-holiday-movies-ranked/

After reviewing these films, the ones with Santa interfaces came down to four, presented below in chronological order.

The Santa Clause (1994)

This movie deals with the lead character, Scott Calvin, inadvertently taking on the “job” of Santa Clause. (If you’ve read Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, this plot will feel quite familiar.)

The sleigh he inherits has a number of displays that are largely unexplained, but little Charlie figures out that the center console includes a hot chocolate and cookie dispenser. There is also a radar, and far away from it, push buttons for fog, planes, rain, and lightning. There are several controls with Christmas bell icons associated with them, but the meaning of these are unclear.

Santa’s hat in this story has headphones and the ball has a microphone for communicating with elves back in the workshop.

This is the oldest of the candidates. Its interfaces are quite sterile and “tacked on” compared to the others, but was novel for its time.

The Santa Clause on imdb.com

Fred Claus (2007)

This movie tells the story of Santa’s n’er do well brother Fred, who has to work in the workshop for one season to work off bail money. While there he winds up helping forestall foreclosure from an underhanded supernatural efficiency expert, and un-estranging himself from his family. A really nice bit in this critically-panned film is that Fred helps Santa understand that there are no bad kids, just kids in bad circumstances.

Fred is taken to the North Pole in a sled with switches that are very reminiscent of the ones in The Santa Clause. A funny touch is the “fasten your seatbelt” sign like you might see in a commercial airliner. The use of Lombardic Capitals font is a very nice touch given that much of modern Western Santa Claus myth (and really, many of our traditions) come from Germany.

The workshop has an extensive pneumatic tube system for getting letters to the right craftself.

This chamber is where Santa is able to keep an eye on children. (Seriously panopticony. They have no idea they’re being surveilled.) Merely by reading the name and address of a child a volumetric display appears within the giant snowglobe. The naughtiest children’s names are displayed on a digital split-flap display, including their greatest offenses. (The nicest are as well, but we don’t get a close up of it.)

The final tally is put into a large book that one of the elves manages from the sleigh while Santa does the actual gift-distribution. The text in the book looks like it was printed from a computer.

Fred Clause on imdb.com

Arthur Christmas (2011)

In this telling, the Santa job is passed down patrilineally. The oldest Santa, GrandSanta, is retired. The dad, Malcolm, is the current-acting Santa one, and he has two sons. One is Steve, a by-the-numbers type into military efficiency and modern technology. The other son, Arthur, is an awkward fellow who has a semi-disposable job responding to letters. Malcolm currently pilots a massive mile-wide spaceship from which ninja elves do the gift distribution. They have a lot of tech to help them do their job. The plot involves Arthur working with Grandsanta using his old Sleigh to get a last forgotten gift to a young girl before the sun rises.

To help manage loud pets in the home who might wake up sleeping people, this gun has a dial for common pets that delivers a treat to distract them.

Elves have face scanners which determine each kids’ naughty/nice percentage. The elf then enters this into a stocking-filling gun, which affects the contents in some unseen way. A sweet touch is when one elf scans a kid who is read as quite naughty, the elf scans his own face to get a nice reading instead.

The S-1 is the name of the spaceship sleigh at the beginning (at the end it is renamed after Grandsanta’s sleigh). Its bridge is loaded with controls, volumetric displays, and even a Little Tree air freshener. It has a cloaking display on its underside which is strikingly similar to the MCU S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier cloaking. (And this came out the year before The Avengers, I’m just sayin’.)

The north pole houses the command-and-control center, which Steve manages. Thousands of elves manage workstations here, and there is a huge shared display for focusing and informing the team at once when necessary. Smaller displays help elf teams manage certain geographies. Its interfaces fall to comedy and trope, mostly, but are germane to the story beats

One of the crisis scenarios that this system helps manage is for a “waker,” a child who has awoken and is at risk of spying Santa.

Grandsanta’s outmoded sleigh is named Eve. Its technology is much more from the early 20th century, with switches and dials, buttons and levers. It’s a bit janky and overly complex, but gets the job done.

One notable control on S-1 is this trackball with dark representations of the continents. It appears to be a destination selector, but we do not see it in use. It is remarkable because it is very similar to one of the main interface components in the next candidate movie, The Christmas Chronicles.

Arthur Christmas on imdb.com

The Christmas Chronicles (2018)

The Christmas Chronicles follows two kids who stowaway on Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. His surprise when they reveal themselves causes him to lose his magical hat and wreck his sleigh. They help him recover the items, finish his deliveries, and (well, of course) save Christmas just in time.

Santa’s sleight enables him to teleport to any place on earth. The main control is a trackball location selector. Once he spins it and confirms that the city readout looks correct, he can press the “GO” button for a portal to open in the air just ahead of the sleigh. After traveling in a aurora borealis realm filled with famous landmarks for a bit, another portal appears. They pass through this and appear at the selected location. A small magnifying glass above the selection point helps with precision.

Santa wears a watch that measures not time, but Christmas spirit, which ranges from 0 to 100. In the bottom half, chapter rings and a magnifying window seem designed to show the date, with 12 and 31 sequential numbers, respectively. It’s not clear why it shows mid May. A hemisphere in the middle of the face looks like it’s almost a globe, which might be a nice way to display and change time zone, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Santa also has a tracking device for finding his sack of toys. (Apparently this has happened enough time to warrant such a thing.) It is an intricate filligree over a cool green and blue glass. A light within blinks faster the closer the sphere is to the sack.

Since he must finish delivering toys before Christmas morning, the dashboard has a countdown clock with Nixie tube numbers showing hours, minutes, and milliseconds. They ordinary glow a cyan, but when time runs out, they turn red and blink.

This Santa also manages his list in a large book with lovely handwritten calligraphy. The kids whose gifts remain undelivered glow golden to draw his attention.

The Christmas Chronicles on imdb.com

So…who did it better?

The hard problem here is that there is a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons to do. Even though the mythos seems pretty locked down, each movie takes liberties with one or two aspects. As a result not all these Santas are created equally. Calvin’s elves know he is completely new to his job and will need support. Christmas Chronicles Santa has perfect memory, magical abilities, and handles nearly all the delivery duties himself, unless he’s enacting a clever scheme to impart Christmas wisdom. Arthur Christmas has intergenerational technology and Santas who may not be magic at all, but fully know their duty from their youths but rely on a huge army of shock troop elves to make things happen. So it’s hard to name just one. But absent a point-by-point detailed analysis, there are two that really stand out to me.

The weathered surface of this camouflage button is delightful (Arthur Christmas).

Coverage of goals

Arthur Christmas movie has, by far, the most interfaces of any of the candidates, and more coverage of the Santa-family’s goals. Managing noisy pets? Check? Dealing with wakers? Check. Navigating the globe? Check. As far as thinking through speculative technology that assists its Santa, this film has the most.

Keeping the holiday spirit

I’ll confess, though, that extradiegetically, one of the purposes of annual holidays is to mark the passage of time. By trying to adhere to traditions as much as we can, time and our memory is marked by those things that we cannot control (like, say, a pandemic keeping everyone at home and hanging with friends and family virtually). So for my money, the thoroughly modern interfaces that flood Arthur Christmas don’t work that well. They’re so modern they’re not…Christmassy. Grandsanta’s sleigh Eve points to an older tradition, but it’s also clearly framed as outdated in the context of the story.

Gorgeous steampunkish binocular HUD from The Christmas Chronicles 2, which was not otherwise included in this post.

Compare this to The Christmas Chronicles, with its gorgeous steampunk-y interfaces that combine a sense of magic and mechanics. These are things that a centuries-old Santa would have built and use. They feel rooted in tradition while still helping Santa accomplish as many of his goals as he needs (in the context of his Christmas adventure for the stowaway kids). These interfaces evoke a sense of wonder, add significantly to the worldbuilding, and which I’d rather have as a model for magical interfaces in the real world.

Of course it’s a personal call, given the differences, but The Christmas Chronicles wins in my book.

Ho, Ho, HEH.

For those that celebrate Santa-Christmas, I hope it’s a happy one, given the strange, strange state of the world. May you be on the nice list.

For more Who Did it Better, see the tag.