Quote: "when I make a consol should it have dozens of vacume cleaner hoses coming out the back and a million un labaled flickering lights?"

I'll save myself a thousand words here and just say:

If you look at the original image at this link or its counterpart at this link which shows the engineering station for the same aircraft, you will see what looks like needless complexity and overwhelming detail. Yet these were not designed to "look" complex - they simply are complex because they support a complex workflow. I trust that the designers made everything as simple as they could, given the economic constraints of space and weight, and a solid knowledge of human factors. It simply takes a complex interface to do a complex job.

So look at the NASA stuff, if only for context. Also, look at high-tech military gear, commercial aviation, merchant marine, industrial electronics and robotics.Today's technology will presage tomorrow's, if only because people perfer the familiar to the efficient, and military specifications have more lives than a cat. (Ever hear the one about the width of US railroad tracks?)

And BTW, it's not like nobody has ever speculated about the future of UI design. The movie Minority Report spent some substantial time and resources on creating what they saw as a "next generation" computer interface. Much of the technology in that movie was based on serious "futurology" although of course they had to give it some splash for the Hollywood effect. Did they get it right? It's too early to tell.

There really is no "one best way". Imagine if you went back to 1965, described the Internet to some smart people, then asked them to design a "Web Site". Do you think any of them would come up with Amazon? Or Google? Or Renderosity? Is it even a valid question? Which website would you choose to represent ALL websites?

UI design, industrial design, etc. - these are not self-contained fields like fine art. Interfaces exist to DO something, and WHAT they do determines how they operate. What does an airlock door look like? Well, how is it used? Passengers only, cargo, or both? Is it operated by the person passing through it, or by an operator in a booth on the other side of the room? Will the operators be wearing bulky gloves, skintight gloves, or riding in a mechancial device with claws? Does it provide access to a science lab, a reactor, or the 23rd-century version of the local auto shop? Does it have to be able to hold up against 50 tons of cargo slamming into it in freefall if there's an accident? You need to answer all of these kinds of questions before you can decide what the "right" look for your airlock would be.

And even if you stick to the dictates of "form follows function" you can get it wrong, because there is the element of design, which is inherently creative and unpredictable. The radio has been around for nearly a century now, and look at all the different designs there are for radios. Some of these are technology driven -- the little plastic one-speaker unit I had in the 70s would not have replaced the oak-cabineted behemoth of my grandparent's day if transistors had not arisen to replace vaccuum tubes -- but some are not. Square radios, round radios, cathedral radios, tiny transistor radios, massive boom boxes... You'd never be able to predict all these variations just by looking at the technological underpinnings, even if you could have predicted the transistor in 1930.

And people need design. It's not optional and it's not going away. It'll be a part of whatever future we end up with, just like music, religion and table manners.

• Jimdoria  ~@>@