Natural User Interface What Is

Natural User Interface What is Natural User Interface? Natural User Interface is a technology that enables users to perform actions on the computer without the visible use of any artificial control devices. In other words, users will be able to operate a computer with speech or hand gestures instead of a keyboard or mouse. These user interfaces will be able to read the gestures or identify the speech and perform actions accordingly.

This the latest revolution in the field of computers and many companies are looking to explore this new concept. Bill Gates, in his last Key Note speech at International CES, identified three important technologies that will contribute to the second digital revolution. One of those was the natural user interface like speech recognition and screens that can recognize hand gestures. (Olenick, 2008). This clearly shows the importance of this technology for the future of the digital world.

Costs and Benefits of this technology to organizations Every product has a benefit and a cost associated with it and Natural User Interface technology-based products are no different. One of the primary benefits is the flexibility it gives users in terms of its usage. It has brought about a paradigm shift in the interaction between man and machine and this simply means more and more users for the product.

This technology is in its nascent stage and as it improves, it is likely to gather a lot of momentum and the usage is only going to up. This product will be a great boon for the retail and service industries. It will enable people to walk into stores and look for whatever they want through these computers. This personal touch is a valuable experience for users because "without physical interaction, information on computers can become very abstract.

Surface computing changes this; it makes working with digital information much more personal and physical." (Harris, 2008. p.22). All these factors, in turn, can give a huge boost to the sales and revenue of the company manufacturing these natural user interfaces and this is one of the main reasons a lot of technology companies want to manufacture this product. The cost associated with this product is also very high. It is a cutting edge technology that requires a lot of specialized manpower to build it.

"Surface computing uses a blend of wireless protocols, special machine-readable tags and shape recognition to seamlessly merge the real and the virtual world." (Derene, 2007: para: 4). This requires complex technology and the right kind of people to put it all together and this is going to cost a lot of money. Besides, the research involved in creating this new technology is also quite staggering. All this means increased cost of production for the business and this in turn can translate to lower demands.

However, the technology is a huge leap and it can revolutionize the way machines operate in the future, provided the costs are brought down by the companies. Current Products Natural User Interface is an emerging field and so there are only a handful of products available in the market. Two of the most popular products are mentioned below: Microsoft Surface Microsoft surface is one of the most popular natural user interfaces that uses multi-touch technology to understand the hand gestures and convert it into meaningful commands for the system.

It helps people to experience digital content in a unique way and it also encourages collaboration and sharing. This project was codenamed Milan and it was released in May, 2007 at the Wall Street Journal's "All things Digital" conference in California. In the words of Derene (2007, para:3), "Gattis took out a digital camera and placed it on Milan's surface. Instantly, digital pictures spilled out onto the tabletop. As Gattis touched and dragged each picture, it followed his fingers around the screen.

Using two fingers, he pulled the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, Gattis put a cellphone on the surface and dragged several photos to it -- just like that, the pictures uploaded to the phone. It was like a magic trick. He was dragging and dropping virtual content to physical objects. I'm not often surprised by new technology, but I can honestly say I'd never seen anything like it." The commercial Microsoft Surface sells for $12,500 and the developer version costs $15,000.

DiamondTouch DiamondTouch is a multi-touch interface manufactured by a company called Circle Twelve Inc. The most unique feature of this product is its capacity for human recognition. It can recognize the touch of one human being from another when everyone is touching the same screen. This table is a great tool for conferencing, collaborating and decision-making. DiamondTouch was available for the public from 2006 and currently it sells for about $10,000.

Comparisons The main difference between the two products is the human factor identification that exists in DiamondTouch and the absence of this feature in Surface. On the other hand, Surface is a complete product for digital.