Voice User Interface Design VUI

I know for some people Google’s announcement about Android wasn’t as exciting as the expectation of hearing them announce an actual “Gphone” (as it was often called there was still a rumor Google was working on an actual device), yet it seem implementations and applications based on this open and free mobile platform are finally coming out (albeit only as prototypes) and demonstrating how such an approach can in fact result in easier ways for consumers to obtain access to a wide variety of applications.

The prototype included a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, Google maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator and notes. Sweet!

Since it seems the idea itself and its implementation are definitively feasible, it seems now the only remaining questions have to do with all the other non-technical reasons that will have a definitive impact on other players in the wireless and mobile arena. As Gigaom cleverly pointed out, some of those include:

1. All users of carriers that aren’t part of the Open Handset Alliance
2. Device-makers which now have to worry about yet another OS
3. Application developers, which will now have to deal with a significant number of handset/carrier/OS combinations
4. Support departments at participating carriers dealing with non-supported application issues
5. Users having to adapt to yet another set of user interfaces and frameworks

And to this I would like to add a 6th one: “UI Designers having to deal with new interaction paradigms, higher customer expectations, while maintaining design simplicity.”

This is definitively a great opportunity for us UI designers to start thinking about new challenges we’ll be facing when these applications/frameworks become available to the masses, in particular when user habits and natural ways of interacting with them call for the use of speech recognition as either the primary way of interaction, or as a back-up/supportive mode for certain types of goals and contexts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Fun Stuff, Speech Industry, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.