Xerox Star Interface

ゼロックス・スター・インターフェース / 1981–1990s / Style / Platform Screen Languages

The screen language set by the Xerox 8010 of 1981. Labelled iconographic symbols stood for folders, in and out baskets, file drawers and other office accessories, which the brochure of that year said amounted to an electronic desk top. Objects on the screen could be moved, copied and deleted with the hand held pointer that the same brochure still had to gloss as a mouse.

Xerox Star Interface — Desktop and icons of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © J R — Desktop and icons of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © J R

Xerox Star Interface — Multilingual document window of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Multilingual document window of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Xerox Star Interface — Compound document screen of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Compound document screen of the Xerox 8010 Star (ViewPoint) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

Every symbol on screen carries a text label, so meaning never rests on the picture alone
The symbols stand for things found on an office desk: folders, in and out baskets, file drawers
Objects are grabbed with the pointer, and moving, copying and deleting form one family of gestures
The spreadsheet appears as a grid of rows and columns, with a menu of tools that act on the matrix

Best used for

Laying out a business application around objects a user already handles rather than around abstract function names
Writing a team rule that every icon must carry a label instead of standing on its own

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Dictionary entry

Type: Put a short noun label under every symbol. The label names a thing on a desk, not a function.
Composition: Treat the screen as the surface of a desk and place objects on it. Keep commands in menus rather than embedding them in the objects.
Material: Work in two tones only and draw the symbols as outlines. Fill is either solid black or left white, with no intermediate greys.
Caution: Stretching the desk metaphor to cover functions that have no desk equivalent breeds symbols nobody can name or find.
Further study: how the 1981 Xerox 8010 brochure explained its iconography / when desktop became the word for the screen itself / the Star development organisation led by David Liddle, and the 1998 restart of a working machine at the Computer History Museum

Related entries

Apple Desktop Interface (アップル・デスクトップ・インターフェース)Shared effects: Trust / Technique.Compare Xerox Star Interface and Apple Desktop Interface
1-Bit Icon Design (1ビットアイコン)Shared effects: Technique.Compare Xerox Star Interface and 1-Bit Icon Design

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