Reader's note: this post is recontructed from some notes I took after attending UX London in 2011. Although the material is old, it still felt worth writing up.
A painting from 356 - 323 BC depicting Alexander the Great using a diving vessel for seeing underwater.
The biggest leap forward in interaction design in the last 15 years has been the shift towards gestural interfaces. Point and click is being usurped by touch and pinch as the way we prefer to manipulate information.
As devices improve and the demand for novelty increases, gestural input becomes more complex, creating a challenge for interaction design. Gestures on modern devices are reminiscent of Graffiti stylus strokes on the Palm Pilot or a special combo in Streetfighter.
“gestures are like the command line of the 21st century”
Gestures are just the start however, as newer and better ways to communicate with devices emerge that are not based on the narrowband of physical input. As image recognition technology increases in fidelity and efficiency, continuous monitoring of our body language and expressions allows a whole range of physical inputs to be accepted.
Consider that 90% of human communication is non verbal - this includes body language, micro expressions not to mention auditory, olfactory and visual stimuli that we are often only vaguely conscious of. All these are potential opportunities for devices to better understand our behaviour and intentions beyond the scope of physical interaction and even to understand us better than we understand ourselves and each other.
The reality is that devices may also impose an as yet undiscovered method of everyday interaction upon us rather than us on them. After all, to many, brain implants already seem like a perfectly reasonable way of reconfiguring our inherited biology to better suit the requirements of a technologically advanced society.
But what's the human cost in all this? I think about the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the achievement of Jean-Dominique Bauby who dictated his autobiography through the blinking of a single eyelid. Like threading the eye of a needle in terms of interaction and yet it created a beautiful work of art. Would this have been improved if the technology existed for a more efficient interface for dictation?
Therein lies an interesting conundrum. Limitless potential is a poor match for the human experience of constrained physical and psychological capability.