Digital Media Buzz > Mobile Me: Future of User Interface Mimics Consumer Behavior

Mobile Me: Future of User Interface Mimics Consumer Behavior

By Ned Smith

If there’s one technology trend that offers hope for the ability of reality to trump hoopla it’s the wholesale adoption of mobile devices in spite of form-factor limitations such as squinty screens and clunky keyboards. What began as an invasion of dropped calls nearly has evolved into a category-confounding ubiquitous ecosystem of mobile devices that can satisfy an amazing number of human wants, needs and whims.

Want to surf the Web? There’s a mobile device for that. Need directions for a shortcut over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house? There are a number of devices awaiting your command. Want a bestseller to grab and go? Kindle, Nook et al., are lined up waiting for your business. Regardless of form or function, though, the one common denominator and marker for successful adoption is the user interface.

They’ve gone from ghastly to reasonably good over the past decade, but they still require the input of a human agent and a human frame of reference, whether that involves typing a query or voicing a command. Google Goggles is great, but it’s as dumb as a post without a human to point it.

GPS-enabled devices that automatically provide your location to your mobile device’s apps represent baby steps down the path that will lead to a whole new way for devices to engage the world. As the new decade dawns, “A combination of advanced sensors, new human-to-machine interface technologies and the Web for application development and real-time information, will enable next-generation devices to leap from being in our lives to being part of our lives and interacting with the world around us,” reports market intelligence firm In-Stat.

In-Stat took a look at that new world in its series examining the evolution of mobile technology, “A New Paradigm in Mobile User Interfaces.” Host Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist of In-Stat’s mobile Internet group, was joined by Fred Cohen from Texas Instrument, Ludvig Linge from The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) and Andrew Hsu from Synaptics.

Opening the gates to this new mobile Age of Aquarius, Cohen says, “will require a new level of cooperation with partners.” Chipset developers like TI and device manufacturers and software developers will need to come to grips with an environment that places a premium on interoperability.

The success of Apple’s App Store (more than 65,000 apps, more than 1.5 billion downloads to date), Android Marketplace and, to a lesser degree, Windows Mobile Marketplace, shows how profitable and user-pleasing cooperation can be. A characteristic of a great ecosystem, TI’s Cohen says, is that it “produces products people really want to buy.”

Those products, says Hsu, Synaptic’s technical marketing and strategic partnerships manager, will feature versatile and intelligent user interfaces. Today’s display-based controls will be supplanted by controls that offer users and devices more ways to interact with the world.

One glance at traffic accident reports involving drivers using mobile devices offers proof positive that we’re not so good at touch-based, one-handed interactions. Alternatives to touch such as gesturing, gripping, squeezing, rotating, rolling, shaking and proximity to objects will provide a much richer, more nuanced environment.

In the pipeline for users, Hsu says, are sensors and technology that will give us the ability to multitask using multiple displays, incorporate augmented reality in our apps, share multimedia experiences, interact with projected images and enjoy real 3-dimensional displays.

Our devices and applications will also be able to interact with us as well as the external world when new bio-sensory input is able to integrate user data such as heart rate and temperature into fitness and medical applications. If you think today is self-referential, just wait until tomorrow.

In spite of all this innovation, the mobile world won’t have to reinvent itself; existing sensors will evolve and collaborate to enrich the device’s interaction with the user’s environment, Hsu believes.

All the sensory connectivity in the world, though, won’t make for a compelling device unless the user is able to understand how to use it. “A good user interface,” says Linge, co-founder of TAT, “is a user interface you don’t notice. The experience that’s going to win is the one that combines the ‘Wow’ effect with intuition.”

Mobile devices - and their user interfaces — need to mimic how the real world works, Linge believes. And they need to make better use of the real estate you have on the screen.

Linge envisions a mobile ecosystem where passive input from GPS, compass and camera feeds is superimposed on images in the real world and where the use of accelerometers and camera motion tracking alter graphics depending on the user’s viewing angle.

With high-density layers in 3D, it will be possible to look behind objects to access more information and reduce clutter. Eye-tracking capabilities may empower your devices to intuit your interest and intentions. This new generation of devices will increase connectivity between the digital and physical worlds.

The forces of convergence and device proliferation in the realm of mobile devices have combined in a tempest that often overwhelms users with an infinitely expanding applications grid. But that storm may quickly dissipate in this new decade of mobility. The course today is away from all-in-one devices toward devices targeted to specific user needs. “Today, TI’s Cohen says, “it’s about hundreds of different apps; it’s no longer looking for the next killer app.” We may be migrating from a world of limited features to a universe of unlimited functionality, but that functionality needs to be tailored to your needs at a given time.

Convergence now, In-Stat’s McGregor says, is around the connectivity, not the devices. “We don’t have to put everything in a single device,” Cohen says. “The Internet is the ultimate common docking station.”

Though the proof-of-concept launch pad for these new technologies may be the mobile world, this is just the beginning of their influence. “This is technology for all consumer applications,” McGregor says, not just the mobile world.

We have met the new mobile user interface and he is us.