Magic Cap

マジックキャップ / 1994–1998 / Aesthetic / Platform Screen Languages

The interface General Magic put on its communicating handhelds, running on the Motorola Envoy and the Sony Magic Link. Instead of imitating single objects it imitates a place, opening on an Office where a telephone, a Rolodex, a notepad and a calendar sit on a desk, with a wall clock, in and out boxes and a filing cabinet behind it. From there a Hallway, furnished and hung with pictures, leads to the Game Room, the Living Room, the Storeroom and the Control Room.

Magic Cap — Josh Carter, Sony Magic Link, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Josh Carter, Sony Magic Link, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Magic Cap — Blake Patterson, Sony Magic Link in use, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Blake Patterson from Alexandria, VA, USA — Blake Patterson, Sony Magic Link in use, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Blake Patterson from Alexandria, VA, USA

Magic Cap — Blake Patterson, Motorola Envoy, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Blake Patterson from Alexandria, VA, USA — Blake Patterson, Motorola Envoy, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Blake Patterson from Alexandria, VA, USA

At a glance

Visual cues

An opening screen where a telephone, a Rolodex, a notepad and a calendar sit on a desk
A wall clock, in and out boxes and a filing cabinet drawn on the wall behind that desk
Movement between rooms goes through a hallway that is itself furnished and hung with pictures
Line drawings on a coarse grayscale display, touched directly with a stylus rather than a finger

Best used for

Designing a handheld for first time users where tools are handed out as rooms rather than as a list of features
Building period art for a mid 1990s handheld where the screen contents have to hold up on their own

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Dictionary entry

Type: Treat type as a nameplate inside the drawing. Name the rooms and the objects briefly and do not fall back on list headings.
Composition: Make the whole screen one place. Chain the desk surface, the wall behind it, the hallway outside and the next room in that order.
Material: Draw rather than photograph. Show each object from the front and give thickness and shadow only to the things that can be pressed.
Caution: Every extra room and hallway pushes the tools further away, so count the round trips before committing to a spatial metaphor.
Further study: how many touches it takes to move to the next room on an actual Motorola Envoy or Sony Magic Link / how Microsoft Bob of the same years took the same spatial metaphor in another form / which products the General Magic design team moved on to

Related entries

Skeuomorphism (スキューモーフィズム)Shared effects: Intimacy / Nostalgia.Compare Magic Cap and Skeuomorphism
Aqua (アクア)Shared effects: Play / Intimacy.Compare Magic Cap and Aqua

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