Copenhagen Cocoa

Natural Interaction

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 12:25 pm

The Mechanical Curse

Traditionally humans were required to use mechanical peripherals to interact with computers, mice, joysticks, and keyboards, have been a part of your digital life. Mechanical peripherals have enabled us to interact with computers in complex ways, but I believe the complexity of our well-established interaction-model is leaving a lot of users behind, the mouse might seem like the most natural tool for you, but it still has a learning curve, and though it may be fast to learn the basics, the initial step is to frightening for many.

The Revolution

What I see in the personal computer industry, is a movement towards natural interaction, a peripheral less world, where interaction is direct, and computers use your motion, your voice, and your touch, to interact with data in complex yet natural ways.

Apple is at the forefront of this movement, their focus on accessibility has not only made their products better for the disabled, but it has also benefitted the majority of users in indirect ways, VoiceOver and VoiceControl are two great examples of technologies that are being actively used by people who are ‘enabled’.

We are at a primitive stage in natural interaction, using mostly touch and gestures to communicate with our devices, but the products that are being developed and adopted by the market are slowly gaining the ability to understand language, intentions, and emotion.

Whether you like it or not, the computer interface is becoming more human, in some ways it is fascinating, and in some ways it is terrifying.