14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Research was playing with natural user interface concepts and prototypes long before the Xbox team ever thought about the possibility of controllerless gaming, which sparked the ideas that culminated with the release of Kinect.
Last week, during the Research Faculty Summit 2011, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, shared some thoughts about the evolution of human computer interaction toward NUI models.
“I think that that's a transition that's still underway but one that will continue to be important. And of course the thing that we spent a lot of time talking about here the last few years is the transition from the graphical user interface to the natural user interface where computers essentially become more like us,” he stated.
Mundie obviously sees NUI as only a part of the overall computing evolution, one that will end up covering all aspects of what users can do with computers today, and even expand to new territories.
Microsoft has always praised developers for the success of its platforms, with a focus on Windows. There’s no need for this to change, even if the interaction model is itself changing.
“And so I think as we look at this array of capabilities, we're really looking at an opportunity to develop new applications for this information, new ways of allowing people to program it, to some extent to build applications with a lot less of the traditional application development complexity, and yet produce things that are more helpful to people,” Mundie added.
“I think that's, ultimately, one of our goals to make the computer less of a tool and more of a helper. And I think this collection of technologies is really moving us pretty rapidly in that direction.”
I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating. Microsoft did good by launching Kinect for Xbox 360. With its strong and loyal following, Kinect is superior, consumer perception-wise, to many of the company’s products, especially those with old and established brands but showing signs of fatigue.
There’s some proof, and quite a lot more speculation, that Kinect will have a part to play in Windows 8. The software giant hasn’t confirmed anything yet, but the company has also been hard at work to port Kinect beyond Xbox 360.
In this regard, I think it will be extremely interesting to see what role will Windows 8 end up having in the evolution of interaction models.
As far as I’m concerned, NUI on Windows started even before Windows 7, but if Microsoft plays its cards right it will be Windows 8 getting all the credit.
From the Windows 8 demos Microsoft showed this year I’ve concluded that rather than speaking of a GUI to NUI transition, we should in fact talk about a GUI plus NUI marriage. After all, the graphical user interface is not going anywhere, but it’s getting a major upgrade with new interaction capabilities.
Natural user interfaces are “something that I have certainly been a big advocate for. We've been gradually moving in this direction in the research domain for many years, certainly at Microsoft and elsewhere. We've got well over a decade in investment in trying to emulate all the human senses, hearing, vision, speech, et cetera,” Mundie said.
“And of course we've seen the world move beyond the traditional point-and-click and particularly with the miniaturization and focus on mobility from the phones, the direct manipulation of the graphical interface through touch has become very, very important as well.
“But so far, and I've said this many times before, each of these things was most frequently used as an alternative way to operate the graphical user interface. Now, as a sort of step back fundamentally, and ask yourself: Is there just a better way for people to interface with computers? At least for a class of problems that go beyond the ones to which we've employed them in the past. And we believe that this was true.
“So, in the time since the last one of these summit meetings, for us, a very profound thing happened, which was the launch of Kinect,” Mundie added.