Star Trek’s elegant Okudagrams

Michael Okuda is a graphic designer responsible for the gorgeous interfaces you see in Star Trek films.

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Being a Trekkie since I was watching the series in Iran as a child and later an avid fan of the Next Generation, my design sensibilities have been shaped subconsciously by Okuda:

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I am a User Experience designer and create interfaces every day but Michael Okuda keeps creeping back to the simplest flow chart I make!

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The whole beauty of Star Trek bridge was thanks to these otherworldly interfaces we have been exposed to; Jean-Luc Picard added the spice. 😉

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You would see commander Ryker interact with LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) more often than Picard:

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Here is the holodeck interface where you can choose between scuba diving or a conversation with Einstein:

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Okudagrams  came in different colors and shapes but always intriguing and in the time when you couldn’t stop the film to absorbe the image, I was always pissed at not getting enough of these ephemeral beauties!

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Here is another one:

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and the good doctor in front of the DNA comparison scan:

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Long before Tom Cruise bedazzled us in Minority Report and the impractical but exquisite 3D interfaces he reacted with, Star Trek introduced us to what could be done and now is being done and used by millions:

They even had an LCARS mobile!

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All of these images are not from Okuda of course; many have been created as an homage to ST and Okuda by fans.

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U.S.S. Enterprise in all its glory:

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Okuda designed logos for a number of NASA missions and programs including the STS-125 mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA has always been  more of a fan of Star Trek than Star Wars!

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So Okuda received the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal.

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Again different variations  of Tricorder or the  multifunction hand-held device used for sensor scanning, data anlysis and recording data. A smartphone!

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Even the old generation of Star Trek had its own Okudagrams:

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I like this one about the shuttles:

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The next one even has a Facebook and Twitter button! 😉

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Can’t get enough of these:

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I am looking forward to reading “Make it so, Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction”. I learned about the book listening to UXpod with Chris Noessel.

Let’s boldly go to the movies

Should I be jealous of Uhura kissing Spock? After all, he is my first love and I’ve known him since he was speaking Persian to the good old James Tiberius Kirk and they were called Pishtaazaane Fazaa…

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I have grown up like millions of Iranians with Star Trek—my cousin, Anousheh Ansari, was inspired by them (she even made the vulcan salute before going to space!)

I still have his picture in my bedroom to prove my unchanging love for Spock:

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I went to see the movie yesterday and I liked it a lot—I am a hopeless Trekkie and all the holes in the plot didn’t bother me a bit. I was relieved to see the first Enterprise where the shield wasn’t leaking energy every few minutes; maybe as Roger Ebert suggested, they did get new batteries…

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On a more serious note, I saw a couple of great movies this week: Il Divo, an Italian film about Gulio Andreotti—I loved it in spite of my ignorance about the politicians involved (and the Mafia),

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Somebody called the new Star Trek movie operatic—they have to see Il Divo to see how a governement can be operatic! That clown Berlusconi is not helping the Byzantine image of Italian politics…

gulio andreotti michele roohani

Another very interesting film I saw was Examined Life; I only knew a couple of the Philosophers but it didn’t diminish the pleasure of watching some intelligent thoughts on screen:

examined life michele roohani

It reminded me of Saul Bellow’s funny quote: Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ My revision is, ‘But the examined life makes you wish you were dead.’

The next film was Goodbye Solo, by the hottest young director—according to Ebert—Ramin Bahrani:

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not bad for a young Persian dude

You can watch him with Charlie Rose here.

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A good movie to me is the one that stays in your mind for a little more than the two hours that you are spending in the theatre and these films will stay with me for a while like my last year’s favorite, Starting out in the evening or Michael Apted‘s unforgettable Up Series about the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old,  up to now (the next episode will be in 2012).

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Imagine seeing the same people grow old in front of your eyes every seven years—it took 42 years to make it—now that’s a documentary!

I do watch entertaining films like the Batman series/Iron Man/Duplicity but from time to time it is refreshing to watch something that makes you stop and think.

Last but not least, today is Mother’s Day in America so please don’t forget to love your mother.

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Visit my best movie post here; these films are really worth watching again.

The batman, the ratman and some other sordid adventures…

I saw the new Batman movie yesterday and I liked it a lot. Heath Ledger was great and knowing he’s passed away makes the role even more frightening…

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The fact that this latest batman is not cracking jokes like George Clooney’s gay version—with Robin—makes it easier to imagine a darker villain for the story. Christopher Nolan (of the Memento fame) has done a great job in these two last movies about the comic book franchise.

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Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer were good as the dark prince but Christian Bale remains the best of the crop and Clooney the absolute worst. He should really stick to his Cary Grant roles. Take a look at the different batmen here.

What I have always liked about Batman is that he’s not a super-hero with funny super powers like the Spiderman, the creepy  Superman or that idiot Hulk! I liked the Iron man for the same reason. The engineer in me cringes every time I have to watch a scientifically impossible film. Even though I am a serious Trekkie, I have never been a fan of the Star Wars. The whole mythology and mentor/princess/father/son bit turns me off. Dune has the same effect on me…

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You don’t want to hear about my childhood crush on Mister Spock so I am going back to my ratman.  Last week I had to ask a rat-man to secure my house from an epidemic of rats in Brentwood/Bel Air area…Bats are not rodents by the way and are genetically closer to us humans.

“Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected. In this case, I should think interesting would suffice.” Spock

Live long and prosper.

vulcan salute michele roohani