Detail

The Nature of Natural User Interaction

As technologies evolve, so do the modalities of interaction and the
associated interaction languages. What evolves far more slowly is the
technology of the users. It is the latter that can provide the best guide
to understanding the former.

Yes, emerging technologies make it possible to better exploit the full
potential of the human. And, yes, this may result in ways of interaction
that are sufficiently distinct from command-line and graphical user
interfaces of the past. But by the same token, just because something uses
speech, gesture, multi-touch, etc., does not inherently make it “natural.”
Likewise, just because something that employs a conventional command-line
interface or GUI does not necessarily make it unnatural.

The “nature” of the beast lies within some appropriate mix of user, task,
technology and context. It is the intent of this talk to dive into the
nature of this mix with the hope of shedding some light on its nature –
light which might help illuminate some of our thinking as we approach
designing future systems.