Adaptive Interaction; the future of UI

The world of the User Experience designer has always been a dynamic one due to technological advancements that have been made the past decades. Not only technology changed but also the desires and demands of the users evolved with it. And maybe in a natural way the UX community was always set to be a community driven by change set to improve the experience of technology in an iterative way in an ever changing world. But even though our community may be accustomed to change, I and probably a lot of others feel we are at the brink of a significant shift within the UX domain especially in the way we will design interaction in the near future.

Vision on the Future of UI

The way how we design interaction at this moment is mainly through User Interfaces (UI) and has already shifted the past years partly to touch screen Interfaces, but in my opinion it will shift even more. Of course I don’t have a crystal ball to see what the future holds, but we could however distinct some rapidly evolving technologies that will surely make a large impact on our way of working and in the way the user will interact with technology. Naturally actual technical coming of age of these technologies may differ in time and some may never mature, also not all of those that do mature will be adapted by the masses for various reasons.

But when we look at what will drive the change in interaction, some evolution is already set in motion. Which in my opinion is the shift of interaction with systems only through a generic interface, towards multiple ways of interaction with these systems. One of the things we are facing for example is the challenge to design for interacting within a VR experience, but also how to utilize voice interaction combined with advanced AI systems. Probably gesture based interaction will come of age. My believe however is that those advancement will not develop on their own, but could work even better when combined. 

Adaptive Interaction

My vision is that it will not be the shift towords only one single new way of interacting with technology, but rather the merging of all the technical advancements into a system that can adapt to the preference the user has. So whatever floats your boat when it comes to interacting with technology, eventually systems will combine and provide these means. A bit like how most screen designs are responsive nowadays, to provide screens for the prefered device of the user. Systems will be designed to provide multiple ways for users to interact with it.

To visualize something as simple as turning of your alarm in the future. In my vision, it will not only by facilitated through the “old school” button on the device or on the phone (either physical or digital). But it can also be done through yelling: “shut it, I’m up already”, or for example a throw away gesture or snapping your fingers to turn it off. The system could maybe after that scan if you’re indeed not going to sleep again, or the phone could sense if you picked it up and actually started moving, to check if you are indeed awake. Maybe the system could eventually through AI know whether you like snoozing or are a person who jumps out of bed immediately and adapt to that preference.

Point is in my view the system will not only offer one way of interacting through it. And even at this moment smart phones have this hybrid form of interaction embedded already, which will only extend in my opinion.

ZERO UI?

I know some visions are more radical towards the disruption which will take place in the UI field, like the ZERO UI vision. The problem I have with ZERO UI, isn’t their way of thinking, but more the lack of acknowledgement that our species is very much visually focused and responds very well to visual input and visual feedback. We just love our screens, so I don’t really think we will drop the existing interaction ways through UI all together. Yet I expect we will provide the user with hybrid forms of interacting with a system.

Of course ZERO UI could be very suitable for some systems, but maybe not so much for other systems. Thing is we should not focus on killing the interface, but rather focus on bringing the user the right type of interaction to operate the system most effective. And because we are all different providing multiple ways of interacting with a system could just be a sensible way to go. So that’s why I advocate to make the future of interaction focus on creating adaptive interaction to let the user decide their best way to interact with a system. And yes, looking at myself, I would really like to end up with Jarvis as my way of interacting ;-)

Tech philosophy

Even though a shift towards different way of interaction may seem disruptive, it actually is a pretty recognisable trend. Which is that technology is evolving in a more human direction (we are ever designing technology to be more like us), while on the other side our species is moving to become more technological due to medical advancements and the growing integration of technology in our everyday life’s. With that observation we are actually entering a whole other domain and travel beyond UX and enter the domain of the ever evolving relation between man and machine and tech philosophy. Which in my opinion is actually touching the very fundamentals of UX and will be the topic of my next post 

About the author: I'm a former Marine who was educated in User Experience and has a predilection for philosophy of technology and stoicism. In addition I have 7 years experience in the financial services industry, first through a large ICT consultancy company and now at a large international bank. In this time I developed a broad view on various aspects of the business environment. Furthermore being a father and raising my three sons creates another window of perspective. From all these different angles I tend to have a rather peculiar opinion on certain topics which I share through my articles.

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