Ask HN: Unusual UIs using computer-computer metaphors, like fake filesystems?

8 points by yesenadam 5 years ago

A lot of computer UI things, if not most, use real-world metaphors, like windows, files, folders, buttons, paste etc, but I'm asking about metaphors between two computer domains, like a folder representing a youtube search (ytfs), or a text file representing a wikipedia page (WikipediaFS) etc.

What are some other UI ideas, using system features for unintended purposes, that you've come across or thought of? Using our familiarity with one domain in another, in a surprising/neat way, so tools meant for one domain can be used elsewhere? Thank you.

(I'm sure "computer-computer metaphors" isn't what these things are called! I'm not sure what to search to learn more.)

Synthetic file systems (deriving from Unix's 'everything is a file/stream of bytes'?) are one common example of this, as are virtual memory/addresses and virtual machines.

Omar Rizwan's talk at !!Con 2018, Four fake filesystems!, started me thinking about this.

Someone 5 years ago

I think it’s not quite what you’re asking for, but do you know of psDoom (http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/)?

  • yesenadam 5 years ago

    Hehe No! Crazy. That sounds a lil like the Adventure Shell, bash as text adventure game.[0]

    It seems Doom as a tool for system administration[1] inspired psDoom. (And does explain it a lot better, for people like me that don't know psDoom or Doom) It says "The mapping of abstract operations to an intuitive environment is a difficult problem. There are two distinct obstacles.." which is exactly what I wanted, thanks! Hehe that page is very funny, and brilliant. I'm finding other leads from comments from its many appearances on HN over the years.

    Edit: Also good is Chao's follow-up 2001 paper Doom as an Interface for Process Management, reporting user feedback ("0.6% were frightened by its implications") and the huge response to psDoom. That has a lot of fascinating-looking references. So thanks very much for that.

    [0] http://nadvsh.sourceforge.net/

    [1] https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/