What does 'rich user interface' mean?

Question

What exactly is meant by the term "rich user interface"?

Does it mean the same thing when referring to user-interfaces as it does when referring to, say, communications frameworks?

Does it imply that a user-interface can be "poor"? (as in the opposite of rich, not as in poorly designed)

Solution 1

From Wiktionary.

(computing) Elaborate, having complex formatting, multimedia, or depth of interaction.

Solution 2

Solution 3

rich | not so rich

Note: "rich" is not necessarily the same as "better".

Solution 4

Looking at the current browser Netflix User Interface (May of 2016 version), I would consider this a rich user interface due to several characteristics.

It is a pretty good front end to an elaborate database of information about movies and television shows. The UI allows a user to select a particular resource, movie or television show, and to then see information about the resource. This screen shot shows the result of looking for additional information about a particular show. The bright white links of cast member names and the categories that Netflix uses gives the opportunity to find other resources by the cast members or other resources categorized similarly.

The resource can be started by clicking the standard play icon, right pointed triangle surrounded by a circle, or you can click on the EPISODES link to pick a particular episode.

Netflix remembers where you left off, at least in most cases (I have seen it want to start with Season 1 again when a new season is added), so the video player will pick the current or next episode, in the case of a TV show, or pickup at the last point of viewing in the case of a movie.

When viewing a resource near the end of the footage, Netflix will automatically queue up the next episode or will present some suggestions.

The mechanism to arrive at the presentation of the details of a show is reused in a couple of places within the user interface though in some cases, such as the list from MORE LIKE THIS, it does not seem to be used and clicking on the movie/show image from the MORE LIKE THIS list starts the resource.

The major characteristic that I see here is that a large and complex database that contains various video resources is presented in a way that allows a person to find a particular resource by using the search or by browsing around. A person can look around in the database and travel along various semantic connections between resources. So you can look for other resources by the same cast members or director/producer or you can look for other resources in categories associated with a particular resource.

It seems that the Netflix UI provides access the the library of resources using fairly standard web page affordances.

My only dislike for the Netflix browser UI is that it is heavily mouse based. The result is that people with poor hand eye coordination such as the elderly can have a difficult time positioning the mouse and doing clicks.

I have seen people have difficulty using the UI as it requires moving the mouse over a particular resource image and holding it there to activate the zoom in effect which then provides access to the down arrow affordance for accessing information about the resource. Moving the mouse precisely and holding it steady and then doing a click without moving the mouse cursor can be difficult for people with shaky hands and poor motor skills.

Solution 5

In my understanding, it generally implies that the UI can do "heavy" things.

Compare clicking a link, waiting, and getting a full-screen refresh containing new information, to clicking a link, and having the new information pop up, perhaps even animate into view, right there.

More features, faster responses, and more "eye candy" are some of the things I associate with the term.

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Comments

[Gumbo]

Richness doesn’t imply complexity.

[Frank]

Hmm, the Google page actually looks a bit fuller than the Microsoft page.

[Fredrik Mörk]

@dehmann: it sure does, and yet it seems more lightweight in terms of client-side functionality (hence my note on "rich" vs. "better").