Back as a grade school kid, I was impressed by the array of neat options we had for decorating our desktops on the old Macs. Patterns! Colors! Eventually… whole pictures! “Cool beans” at the times, really. Even back then, I was wondering how we’d be entertaining our eyes in between games of Super Word Muncher, Mario Teaches Typing, and Make the Computer Verbalization Program Say Silly Words.
Sadly, nothing much has really changed. Static pictures adorn the vast majority of backgrounds. A few pioneers have information dynamically sent to their desktops, but only after hours of tomfoolery and unofficial certifications in awesome geekery. Still, in the mainstream, few everyday users get more complicated than a slideshow of background photos, changing on a day-to-year long time scale, with or without automation. Boooooring.
Then again, boring might be good. Reduced distraction from activities more productive than staring at a music visualization screensaver and so forth. Backdrop and other similar “blank out everything” applications are growing in popularity of late along with a general “simplification” trend in interface design.
On the other hand, productivity might be overrated. Entertainment has a respectable value on its own. More importantly, there is the possibility of inducing wonderment in young users with a fancy, mind-begoggling base user stomping ground.
What sort of desktop decorations could do this?
