Voice User Interface Design VUI

Interesting article came out today on the New York Times regarding the efforts LG Electronics goes through when designing a new phone. Some others like Nokia are certainly not far behind, thinking about how personal communication will look like in the future via ideas such as Morph (depicted on the image).

I certainly wish more companies would apply similar these same principles they apply to design new products and consumer electronics but in the context of new services and consumer support. For example, they talk about participants being able to call a toll-free number to share their emotions about a phone they may be testing, or they are asked to draw pictures representing their mood when holding a phone. Can you imagine having something like this for self-service applications – being able to leave a message about how you felt about your phone experience, or being able to ask callers to represent their mood when using the system via pictures?

I can definitively understand the business motivation to be able to come up with innovative devices that draw people to spend money on them. But I would love to see a similar “hit-driven” mentality when it comes to self-services, having designers being not only aware of the latest usability and human-factors strategies but also about popular culture trends and user’s subliminal needs. What will callers want or need 3 to 15 years from now?

I loved the phrase they used to explain how companies like Motorola are now “forced to give consumers what they want even before they know they want it.” When was the last time your UI design strived to do that?

And I also felt our industry got reflected in Nokia’s statement “Design used to be inconsequential: just make it pretty, make it sell”, which in our case could probably be rephrased as “Just make it comply with requirements, make it work.”