April 04, 2003
Alan Kay: Bio
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Alan Kay: The Curriculum of the User Interface |
Kay is responsible for a long list of technological and theoretical innovations, including the Dynabook- the first real personal computing system, and Smalltalk- the first object oriented programming language. However, perhaps Kay has been most important to theories of user interface design. He writes that with the advent of personal computing, "millions of potential users meant that the user interface would have to become a learning environment." Kay first developed these ideas with the Smalltalk language at Xerox PARC, building an interface of layered windows that would become the predecessor to the modern MacOS and Windows desktop schemes. Kay's truly radical idea, however, and the concept that has fueled his research with projects such as the Learning Research Group (LRG) in 1970 to Squeak today, is the idea that computer interfaces should be designed in such a way that the user gains a type of authoring literacy by engaging the interface rather than being prone to it. The logical next step then, was to use these machines as educational tools for children- the creation of an "environment in which users learn by doing: a curriculum of the user interface."
Kay's contribution to the world of interactive media is therefore more than the mere sum of his myraid creative and technical innovations. The idea that interactive media is ideally structured as an educational platform is an important concept that provides a possible blueprint for the development of interactive content and again proves Kay's notion that the future is best seen through invention and innovation.
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Posted by will at April 4, 2003 04:32 PM
