First seen on Snarkmarket – this amazing little site belonging to the guy who designs fictional user interfaces for movies. Here’s one from the Bourne Identity:
And here’s a fascinating little exchange in the comments, in answer to the question “do you get your ideas from existing government interfaces?”
There is little access to government interfaces and that which does exist, tends to be very old (having undergone a mandatory clearance time period). The fact is, they would use very little that is different in look and feel from any other systems and interfaces out there. If anything, a basic knowledge of the slow pace at which any government service operates, technologically, one could make the assumption that it is a few years out of date.
Overall, the look we go for in these circumstances is almost a hybrid of what Mac, Windows and Linux would look like. The content itself is made to look ‘techy’ but fulfill just one primary aspect. Tell the story.
Reference points we would go to for this kind of thing is no different than the content shows. Image liraries, video feed and camera installations. Databases and communications. All stuff that exists in the real world, used by many other people, not in government. The common assumption is that they have their own unique systems, whereas they probably do not. The way their system work and interact along with odd tools might be unique but generally, not a lot different.
The irony here is that the perception they have something different from the rest of us, is probably propagated by films.
