A lot of the research I've been doing has been around invisible UI and blind interactions, which led me to this interesting read by Timo Arnall, No to NoUI. Timo was the creative director at BERG London (R.I.P.) and has been researching new ways to interface with technology. His Touch project has been focusing on RFID's as a design material, see more about it here. In No to NoUI, he outlines his contention with invisible interfaces into four points,
1. Invisible design propagates the myth of immateriality
2. Invisible design falls into the natural/intuitive trap
3. Invisible design ignores interface culture
4. Invisible design ignores design and technology history
Timo states,
Which I roughly translate to by removing the interface, you are removing the platform to learn, as a designer and as a user, the technology and the patterns that are for example, what makes using Apple products so fulfilling.
He goes on,
I really like how he points out the difference between reduction and legibility vs creating unknowns. Although Nest is working in the background, there is a ambient feedback that balances the complexity quite nicely. This is exactly the type of experience I'm looking to create in the car, a balance of micro interactions that are simple and legible but give you solid connection between the operation of driving. Which leads me to defining blind interactions, a state in which the placement and feedback create the ability for users to interface in a flow that doesn't require them to look at the interface it self. A clear distinction, but one I think needs to be kept in mind when creating user flows for drivers as to not complicate complex cognitive loads.
or as Timo describes it,