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> I wonder when we'll see the last GUIs, and everything will be speech-based The answer is never. The reason is that different kinds of UIs are effective for d

> I wonder when we'll see the last GUIs, and everything will be speech-based The answer is never. The reason is that different kinds of UIs are effective for different kinds of tasks. I can't remember who I heard this from, but they asked the audience to imagine a speech-based steering wheel for cars. "Turn left... more... more... MORE!!! LESS! LESS!" Speech also has problems with sensitive data in public places ("Please enter in your password" or "Your stock portfolio is now worth ..."), has problems with noise, and can also interfere with some parts of your cognitive processes. In addition, speech is serial, which means that you can pretty much only process one stream at a time. Contrast this with a web page that you can skim, or a visualization that can show a lot of data. Different kinds of interactions have different tradeoffs. Speech is good for some tasks, and not very good for others.

Someone 5y ago
> I can't remember who I heard this from, but they asked the audience to imagine a speech-based steering wheel for cars. "Turn left... more... more... MORE!!! LESS! LESS!" Star Trek fans probably would know the correct answer: don’t use a steering wheel; that’s just a means towards a goal, not the goal itself. Everybody who ever used a taxi could have figured out the proper speech UI for a car, too: “Take me to the airport”/“follow that car”/etc. We don’t have touch-based ovens where you prod the fire with your bare fingers or cars where you have to tap a screen to inject gasoline at just the right time, either. Actually, the ideal UI is like a good butler: you don’t even have to tell him what you want; he just knows. But yes, the answer likely will be ‘never’.
kaba0 5y ago
Also, human vision is the single most important way we understand the world, the visual cortex is also proportionally much larger than other sensory organs’. It would be a downgrade to restrict our communication with computers to a more narrow channel.
skadamat 5y ago
Definitely agree with never, but I'll let Bret do the talking! http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

Someone 5y ago

> I can't remember who I heard this from, but they asked the audience to imagine a speech-based steering wheel for cars. "Turn left... more... more... MORE!!! LESS! LESS!" Star Trek fans probably would know the correct answer: don’t use a steering wheel; that’s just a means towards a goal, not the goal itself. Everybody who ever used a taxi could have figured out the proper speech UI for a car, too: “Take me to the airport”/“follow that car”/etc. We don’t have touch-based ovens where you prod the fire with your bare fingers or cars where you have to tap a screen to inject gasoline at just the right time, either. Actually, the ideal UI is like a good butler: you don’t even have to tell him what you want; he just knows. But yes, the answer likely will be ‘never’.

kaba0 5y ago

Also, human vision is the single most important way we understand the world, the visual cortex is also proportionally much larger than other sensory organs’. It would be a downgrade to restrict our communication with computers to a more narrow channel.

skadamat 5y ago

Definitely agree with never, but I'll let Bret do the talking! http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...