It seems to be a tendency these days for technology to go ahead of itself, releasing new and fascinating ideas continually. Natural user interfaces is one of the hottest topics these days. If you still haven't heard about them, I suggest you visit the natural user interface wiki on Wikipedia. These concepts are meant to improve the way we use technology or the way we interact with it. Lately we have seen that Microsoft has been more involved in social media environments and in the way users receive theyr products. It's not that crispy office company anymore. Or at least that's the way they want to appear.The natural user interface Microsoft is developing is meant to improve the user interaction with the computer. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, discusses how science and information technology can help solve the world’s biggest problems. In his presentations to college students Mundi uses text, voice but also hand gestures to manipulate the data on the screen. The most interesting thing though is the eye tracking, where you skim you eyes over the page in a very natural way.
Dont think that only big corporations have a part of all this hype. There are a lot more people passionate about such things. In fact there are even natural user interface groups out there. NUI Group, which actually is an acronym for Natural User Interface Group, is just one of them. You can check out their website at www.nuigroup.com. They have some really nice videos about the concepts that they created or tested.
Also in the commercial area there are several companies that provide customers multi-touch solutions, but mostly in the advertisement business. One company that deals with natural user interface in Europe is NUITEQ. Natural User Interface Technologies AB (NUITEQ) is a Swedish innovative technology company with its main focus on delivering commercial advanced multi-touch software solutions, to the global market. Additional services include multi-touch hardware solutions.
For all of these cool natural user interface devices you would of course need the top of the line technology or you would have to build it yourself, if you have the skills. But all of it is still in concept phase, which means it may never be created the way it is presented, it might not be cost-effective or another cool thing will come out in the meantime. One thing still bugs me about those transparent glass displays though. Won't they get all smeared from hand fat and fingerprints? Do you always have to clean them?
