It definitely is for me. The LCARS interface is as much of a character of the story as the as the Enterprise herself (substitute with Voyager, Defiant, or São Paulo if you wish) and I’d go a step further of saying ship interfaces and systems inform us as much about the era of Star Trek one is watching as does the plot and narrative at any given moment to the discerning and attentive Trekkie :)
Strongly agreed. Which is why I was glad to see LCARS returning in Lower Decks, and the series is experimenting with tweaking the design a little to include some lessons in UI design learned over the past decades. Despite being animated comedy, I like it better than post-Enterprise installments, because it brings back the design language of TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era.
ENT in particular was interesting, when I went back and re-watched it after finally getting to TNG/DS9/VOY (ENT being the first one I saw): They IMO successfully crossed real-world interfaces with TNG-era LCARS [0], creating something that looks vaguely like a tiled window manager, has a minimize function akin to the Windows start-bar (the icons on the right are minimized windows, used on rare occasion in the show for discreet messages), but with a whole bunch of hints of a natural progression into what it would become later in-universe.
It's also interesting how they included design hints of how this would evolve in to TOS era design later (the bulky monitor for example).
It's kind of ironic actually: we as viewers expect that kind of historical consistency, and complain about changes that feel disconnected, but in reality the history of interface design is full of such kind of radical shifts!
It's various minor things. Like PADDs being proper LCARS tablets with a bit more space for content, smaller bevel[0] and even portrait mode[1]. Or the experiments with circular (radial) elements on display, which arguably are now decorative, but still they fit in, so are a good starting point for further exploration.
Or, and I can't find a screenshot of it now, that one tiny joke that made me almost spit out my tea. A scene on the bridge, the captain talking to someone over the viewscreen; she makes a gesture to cut off audio, the tactical officer presses a button on his console, and a small icon of a crossed out speaker appears on said console. Immediately recognizable even for non-StarTrek audience, and still they made it fit the style.
