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How does the crew recognise LCARS?
supergaminggeek
Member Posts: 616 Arc User
I've been noticing that unless unless the digits are noting the designation of a station or whatever the station is monitoring, the rest is a mix of ascending numbers. How is this be memorised by crew, and why does it not get specified by something more convenient?
Post edited by supergaminggeek on
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Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Okuda fan, and think they did a great job of making it look like it did stuff on screen, but in reality, if you tried to convert any kind of control structure into LCARS, it would be vastly inferior in many ways.
Yeah, back in the Windows 95/98 days, there was an LCARS mod/skin that would totally convert the UI to an LCARS-based one. Obviously it wasn't touch-based, but still, it really, really looked and felt like LCARS.
As a Trek nerd, I was all over that.
As someone who needed to get things done with his computer, I uninstalled it after a couple of days.
Like His Taconess said, it looked way cool on screen and was a beautiful design visually. But it wasn't designed with actual usability in mind at all.
Would be nice though if a newer version that wasn't as much of a mess was created. I mean, with all the touch screen technology out there now...
I'd use it just for the fact that its Star Trek based.
Just a fun thought
As for usability, I try to keep in mind that the random data is just a standin for actual information. But LCARS has an issue with ENTRY of data.
It could be modified into a functional interface but as-is it's more decorative than functional.
My character Tsin'xing
I'm going to disagree. The further our interfaces progress, the simpler it can be to do things that used to be complex. If you give someone who only knew a command line interface an Apple ANYTHING, they'd be lost. Conversely, give an iPad or iMac user a UNIX system, they'd wonder how anything got done.
The more powerful the back end is (and the more the interface is customized to access powerful functions simply) the more something like LCARS becomes probable. And the Windows LCARS interface isn't a fair comparison, because the Trek LCARS eliminates the need for a lot of controls and input methods by way of the touch-screens and the voice interface. An Engineer can tell a computer to model x if y=true but z=absent, simply by speaking, and off they go. Trying to do that without voice would require more interface elements, thus the appearance that LCARS, by our standards, is inefficient or clunky.
Add to that the fact that the Federation had about 400 years longer to perfect this concept than modern-day computer designers, and you have LCARS.
As to the streams of random numbers, I submit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal , where real world scientists were given a string of seemingly random numbers by a study. To us, it means nothing. To a trained scientist, every number on that page means something. Starfleet officers are trained on those systems to know what those numbers mean, just as the scientists who worked on the project linked above were trained to know what those numbers meant. The difference between meaningful and meaningless may just be a matter of perception influenced by training or lack thereof.
My character Tsin'xing
Not that I am arguing with the Taco, but in all fairness to the TV shows. From their perspective, It probably only needed to look pretty.
I don't know that the plan was ever to convert LCARS into anything practical with any kind of real world applications. The Fact is they were designing something for the TV screen. So "looks pretty" covers what they needed to do.
Speaking from my own area of expertise, Accountancy, if I know I'm looking at a cash-book/ledger, I don't need column headings for me to understand the data. This is because day-books and ledgers follow established standards, which once you've learnt, become as natural and automatic as breathing.
The same would hold true for the highly trained members of Starfleet, for whom a sensor analysis data-stream would not need context displayed on screen because they already how to apply context.
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Instead of having to set condition blue, align thrusters to atmospheric entry, prepare landing gear, etc just let me press the condition blue interface icon and have all the rest be automatically done when it needs to be.
The same can be done with a lot of other actions, but not with everything and the main computer does know everything in existence, something manual inputs have to be made, but that takes too long o show on tv.
It's plausible that the numbers seen on screen ARE some sort of data tables but a lot of forms of data are much more comprehensible when rendered visually.... Especially sensor scan data. Radar uses video screens for a reason. :P It's just too many numbers for a person to be able to easily understand.
My character Tsin'xing
I think what we should really be more concerned with was why so many doors and simple objects needed to have multiple pushes instead of just a single button or even just a voice command.
I think that's a good analogy. Of course it doesn't make sense to us - its from three hundred and fifty years in the future.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
For entering passwords/manual control in case voice interface is down? Manual control for a mute species? The Federation has hundreds of species in it. They'd have to make allowances for species that don't use verbal communication (telepaths etc).
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-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vOvDFxn76g
the SET PROPS of course had no real function, they were only supposed to look cool
now this stuff on the other hand is just eyecandy:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18l0t9c4x6lrbjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg
- LCARS is based on the AI they used. This AI was of extreme intelligence (if not full self-awareness or sapient thought). It was said to literally reconfigure the panels as tasks dictated. It anticipated the most likely courses of action and wired them to one or two buttons.
- In this vein, it is possible, if not probable, that crew are extensively trained in LCARS, and essentially, rather than see it as a tool, more view it as a partner of sorts. The computer, likewise, dynamically shuffles around the user profile, including automatic transfer between, say, starships, and it learns the user much as the user uses the computer.
- Most of the "indicators" we see, the ones with numbers, weren't really super visible on TV. They needed text there to indicate that yes, there was function to the form, but the numbers were thrown in and as good as anything from that viewing perspective. Note that some of the displays had very ridiculous text when they didn't have numbers, e.g. I believe the consoles in sick bay had "health insurance remaining" as one of the indicators for patient vital signs.
Now myself, I think a lot of this is somewhat silly, and I'm pretty sure to have some of this we'd need to ditch a standard interface entirely and use brain-to-computer interfaces (which are in research and development and have produced limited results already). I also think that the devices the computer controls (e.g. sensors, life support, deflectors, etc.) are far too complex to be represented by the keyboards we see, and furthermore the options the computer would present, while often useful, would be too constricted and would likely be so badly constricted that in an emergency the ship would be lost while the user tries to convince the computer to give it some non-standard option. Additionally, attempts to "emulate" the LCARS interface not only simply map standard user interface functions into a graphically similar LCARS skin, but also leave out the computer intelligence that drives the UI.
However, ultimately the purpose of LCARS was, as stated, to give the ship a futuristic computer interface. In this, it seems to have succeeded. It also - likely by dramatic necessity - omits significant concerns such as ergonomics, device complexity, practicality, and just how MUCH the AI would actually be able to do (an AI is not God, no matter how smart we make it, and if it IS that smart it should just run the ship outright for the puny flesh beings it protects).
Not exactly the same, but in the same vein, when Tuvok was blinded in the Year of Hell, his console engaged a tactile interface.
I've always thought that the first thing on the Academy curriculum is touch-typing, so officers can use the interface swiftly, and without error. After all, one would not want to drop shields instead of firing torpedoes
Actually one thing I have considered is that it's possible that LCARS customizes based on sensing the neurological activity in the user. It may have a "default" of some sort for beings which it can't read, such as Data. However, the computer and the user "learn" each other, so the button that, for instance, is most easy/intuitive for Worf to fire phasers with BECOMES the fire phaser button.
This may have some big flaws - for instance, the first layout you slap together on working with an unfamiliar system may prove terrible in five minutes - but it's not out of the realm of possibility that this may play an important factor. I imagine LCARS may use a wide variety of methods to determine the best layout for both default and individuals that it can work with.