Survival JENNY Centre of the Fittest: The Evolution of Multimedia User Interfaces PREECE and Systems Interaction, South Bank University, 103, Borough Road, London ac.uk) for People ( preecej@uax.sbu. BEN SHNEIDERMAN Department Research, of Computer University Science, Human-Computer College Park, Interaction Laboratory, and Institute for Systems of Maryland, Maryland ( ben@cs.umd.edu) Multimedia is an art-world term, often credited to designers Charles and Ray Eames, that describes the fusion of media such as painting, sculpture, photography, music, and video. Within the world of computers it is used broadly to describe almost any combination of media, ranging from simple text and graphics through to the Eames vision [Preece et al. 1994; Shneiderman 1992]. This diversity raises questions about the origins of multimedia interface styles, emerging genres, and widgets. In the natural world such diversity is elegantly explained by Darwin s theory of evolution through survival of the fittest. In the case of technology, market forces determine which novel designs survive. Predicting change is hard but we now know much about the preferences and limitations of humans interacting with computers. Principles can be drawn upon that help explain why some interfaces survive and others become extinct. For example, interfaces that are
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