Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sees a future where the hand and voice will be more natural user interfaces than keyboards and mice. He's absolutely right.
This evening, Bill Gates spoke about changing UIs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Theme of this year's CES is the convergence of entertainment technologies and business.
The keynote was his last, since Gates is officially leaving Microsoft at the end of June. "This is the first time since I was 17" that Gates won't work at Microsoft, he said of his last day. Gates has appeared at CES 11 times—10 keynotes, eight of them consecutively. "My first keynote was in 1994," he said.
By the way, Gates was unusually relaxed and even funny. His exit keynote was perhaps his best for CES.
Gates referred to his past key keynote predictions about telematics, or auto computing, PDAs and interactive TVs, like Windows Media Center. These predictions all are examples of evolving computing user interfaces.
Gates predicted three trends that would drive technology innovation over the next decade: "High-definition experience everywhere"; "all of these rich devices will be services connected"; and "the power of natural user interface." The last two trends both are mechanisms for evolving user interfaces.
"People are interested in a more natural way to navigate the information," Gates said.
Gates' vision of the future resembles the original Star Trek, where voice commands and touch—manipulation by fingers—will replace mouse and keyboard.
Anthropologically, the mouse and keyboard are, used together, an unnatural user interface. Human beings are tool users that experience and manipulate the world through five senses. There is little in human biological or cultural experience that equates to either device. Most tools are really extensions of the hands; the mouse and keyboard UI is neither. The keyboard is a particularly unnatural construct, by the way fingers are used or by key's alphabetical organization, which is based on the number of times letters are likely to be used.
Microsoft's Surface and Apple's iPhone and iTouch are excellent examples of touch as user interface. Windows Vista has pretty good voice controls, and through the Tellme acquisition Microsoft will seek to make voice the primary UI for telephony devices. Microsoft plans to offer touch screen capabilities with Vista successor Windows "Seven."
On the Web, search is the most successful UI, in part for its simplicity. Search is like the command line for the Internet. All these examples suggest dramatic PC user-interface changes are well underway.
Microsoft is no stranger to pioneering new user interfaces. The much-maligned Microsoft Bob and Clippy are examples of Microsoft attempts to simplify how end users interact with computers. Years ago—and for several of them—Gates stood on the CES stage, and also that of Comdex, touting Tablet PC.
Gates is a big Tablet PC supporter, but Microsoft's execution is too complex. A stylus is supposed to be like a pen or pencil, and so a more natural and familiar user interface than the keyboard and mouse. But the process of using a stylus on a Windows Tablet PC is more complicated than using a pencil or even keyboard and mouse.
Touch is the extension of the stylus, and it's a much more natural user interface. For the human tool user, hands, fingers and touch are especially important for experiencing and manipulating objects or surroundings. The shopping mall is a great laboratory for understanding how people interact with things. First buyers look, and then they touch. For retailers it's an irritating experience, all that touching. People examine as much with their hands as their eyes.
Good user interfaces build on the familiar—and there is nothing more familiar than me, myself and I. See, say, hear and touch. Gates' vision is sensible. But vision doesn't always become reality, and Microsoft's co-founder has before talked about future products or technologies that the company couldn't deliver.
The underlying biological mechanisms of hand movement are complex, but the complexity is largely hidden from people. By contrast, complexity too often defines technology and the accompanying user interfaces. Ear, eye, hand and touch and voice are extensions of "me" that technology must embrace, like iPhone, iPod or Touch.
During Gates' keynote, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, demonstrated several new user interfaces, "Sync" auto information system and Tellme's "Say and See." Bach predicted that mobile search would be the most important application for the cell phone market. There, voice command would be an important user interface, he said.
But Microsoft also is taking an autonomic nervous system approach to user interfaces. Gates spoke about the "connected experience" with respect to Web services and information following people around. There, Microsoft continues to advance information and services integration around Windows Live.
Gates demonstrated a visual recognition system for mobile phones. The visual recognition system uses the phone's camera to bring up information on people or places. The system also uses Live services, such as Virtual Earth.
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