Oscars and Interfaces

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are gradually becoming more powerful and more accepted. They are the standard way of interacting with the web and play an increasing role in many software applications. Nevertheless, they have not been generally adopted, and critics point to particular weaknesses and disadvantages. Many of these are due more to flaws in design and implementation than to the basic concepts of GUIs. More attention could be paid to what users want to do and how a GUI might be developed to support these goals. Using a dataset about Oscar nominees and winners, this paper considers what analyses statisticians might carry out and what kind of GUI would be appropriate for these tasks. (It also offers some insights into the Oscars dataset.)