Is Morgan Stanley underestimating UI changes?
Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research
I just noticed Morgan Stanley’s 2010 Internet Trends posted by we are social and there is plenty of interesting stuff in there. Lots of coverage of mobile, iPad and advertising as you may expect. The slide that caught my eye was #16 which talks about the evolution of user interface and collaboration.
It’s the UI and input part I’m most interested in and don’t necessarily agree with. Here’s why
As an input device, the mouse isn’t going away anytime soon. Touch, multitouch, voice and other ways of interaction will grow massively over the next few years but as I was reminded by a letter in Wired this month, the mouse really is a brilliant input device because it scales. An inch on your mouse pad is a small fraction of an inch on your screen. Don’t assume this is a Microsoft defensive position (after all we didn’t invent the mouse), more a statement that as an input device, the mouse has an awful lot going for it.
More broadly, I expect we’ll see much more than fingers as input devices – we’ll certainly see much more multi-touch and multi user multi touch for devices that are more collaborative and public use (think of a map or signposting). We’ll also start to see voice, movement and even emotion become part of the input options. Take a look at the Milo video to see what I mean. As A.J. Jacobs notes, Natal isn’t just about games – think of controlling your TV guide by swiping your hand Minority Report style. Mark Harris at The Times of London remarked that Natal could be used to control your TV with voice. That’s going to make watching sports interesting as I shout uncontrollably at the TV :)
The boundary between input device and user interface is actually going to blur as the Morgan Stanley slide sort of shows hence I think it’d more accurate to change the Touch User Interface box on their slide to say “natural” as a type of user interface. Touch just feels a bit too one dimensional to me. What I expect (and hope) we’ll see is user interfaces and input mechanisms that are a lot more human and allow us to work how we’d like, not how the technology forces us to. Sounds scary but isn’t that how it should be?
Screen technology is going to be an important part of this mix as we venture way beyond what we acknowledge today a a screen (from mobile to large LCD/LED screens) to the point that almost any surface can become a screen. Pico projectors are already is mass production and their potential is yet to be really tapped. As the prices drop, the places they’ll get embedded will just go up. Think of the ubiquity of multi mega pixel digital cameras today from where they were even 3 years ago as a barometer for change and take a look at LuminAR and Jonny Chung Lee’s work to see the art of the possible.
Finally, I’d add in contextual awareness as part of the user interface/input/usage mix. With devices now able to accurately determine where we are at any given time and thus whether we have been there before and therefore what we may be about to ask of our technology we move from a world of the technology being a “dumb” servant to our requests to one that could anticipate our needs. Imagine you’re at the grocery store, you pull out your smartphone and the device asks if you want to use it to pay for the groceries just as you did last week. That’s a pretty simple one and I’m sure you can think of better examples than me.
My intent here is not to say that Morgan Stanley is wrong – they have analysts who are far smarter than me working on this stuff – it’s merely to point out that we will need to reset or horizons on User Interface very soon as a lot of change is just around the corner.
Buckle up!