interface utilisateur naturel*

Dawn of the Interface
For 140 years, we have been using the QWERTY style keyboard layouts to interface with typing machines and in the 20th Century computers.  The impact of the QWERTY layout has even found its way on to our mobile phones, including those with only a touch interface.  How has a 19th Century invention persisted for so long as the primary interface for machines, especially computers?  It is time for a more natural user interface.

Natural User Interface Meets Gaming
My earliest memory of a more natural interface would be Nintendo’s Power Glove. Does anyone remember that? It was a bit clumsy, but it was novel at the time. However, developers did not create enough applications to make it a mainstay in gaming.

Speech and Handwriting
Nearly 15 years ago, we saw the advent of speech recognition software to create another more natural interface with our voice. What used to require a separate product is now built-in to every version of Windows since Windows XP. Also with Windows XP, Microsoft introduced the Tablet PC Edition that brought handwriting recognition that is now built into every Windows PC since Windows Vista.

Ubiquitous Multi-Touch
Windows Vista enabled the Microsoft Surface table to create a very sexy Multi-Touch interface that eliminated the need to have any device at all to connect with the machine. By simply using your hand, you can command the computer. Today, Windows 7 ups the natural user interface ante by making Multi-Touch standard in the operating system.

The Next Leap
The evolution to a more natural user interface will continue as more consumers enter the PC market in developing nations.  A major evolution will be the Fall 2010 release of the XBOX 360 Project Natal system.  Filmmaker Steven Spielberg declared that Project Natal was “not about reinventing the wheel, it was about no wheel at all!”

Rethinking “What is Natural?”
While Project Natal is innovative and exciting, I agree with our Microsoft Principle Researcher, Bill Buxton who says what is natural depends on user intent and their present context.  For example, it would not be appropriate to have a Project Natal interface on an airplane.  An Air Marshall could have you detained.  Moreover, handwriting recognition is inappropriate when you want to draw. Speech recognition is not needed when you want to sing.  Context and what you want to do are really the prime drivers of the natural user interface.

As we think about our learning environments and spaces over the next ten to twenty years, it will not be the device du jour that will impact student learning in positive and meaningful ways.  Every generation finds a new widget that they believe will change everything. For one generation, it was the radio, another thought the television, then next the PC, what about the PDA, oh we have to get electronic whiteboards for everyone and projectors, we need one laptop per child, perhaps we should co-op their phones, and finally let’s splurge on iPads.  And our graduation rates in America are what again? When it comes to designing learning spaces, you really need to take anthropologist approach and study how we interact with each other in multiple contexts and what is appropriate to achieve our outcomes individually and collectively.

Making NUI Necessary
One of the greatest opportunities we have to improve our learning environments for both the instructor and the learner is to the treat the environment itself as an interface and allow everyone to use what it is most natural for them to connect, participate, contribute, and share within it.  That type of thinking will require all of us to not plan the future as a hyper-reality of the present.

Over the next ten years, software will make it hard to distinguish what we consider to be a computer from magic.  Moreover, much of what we have to pile on as extra functionality today, will be mainstream like speech, handwriting, multi-touch, gestures, and more are today.  So revisit your school improvement plans and ask the hard questions:

• Are we positioning ourselves, our campus, and our learners for the world they will live in or the ones we live in?
• Are we building the level of “fluency” in the languages and literacy across multiple disciplines that learners can express themselves and convey original thought?
• What will be meaningful to do today -as in right now- that will have the biggest impact for the 8 year old learners who will graduate in 2020?  What about today’s 9 year olds that will be college freshmen in 2020?

Our present state of education is the harvest of seeds sown and unsown 10, 20, and 30 years ago-almost 2 generations.  What seeds can we sow today, that fundamentally change a generation and impact a community?

I would encourage your debate in the comments below.

Resources:

• CES 2010: Natural User Interface (NUI) with Bill Buxton
• Microsoft Songsmith – You sing, Songsmith writes the music
• Microsoft Research – Human-Computer Interaction
• Microsoft Surface

* If you are having trouble reading the title, just copy and paste it into the Bing Translator.

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