#07 - Future of Interfaces
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Hello and welcome to the Future of UX podcast. I'm Patrizia Reiners, UX/UI Designer and Creative Resident at Adobe.

In this episode, I am not going to do an interview like usual. No, in this episode, I am going to share my learnings about the future of interfaces. So this episode is about the future of interfaces and also one recommendation, which is please don't steal UX concepts from science fiction. If you don't know what I mean, please wait for the full episode.

So what is the first thing that comes in your mind when we think about the future of interfaces? Probably things we have seen in movies like Iron Man or maybe even Star Trek. There are actually some really good reasons for not using Star Trek etc. as a reference for the future and I will share some thoughts with you about the future of interfaces in this episode.

During the residency at Adobe I focused on the future, especially on the future of UX and interfaces in general. And I spent the last year talking to a ton of designers all around the world and I also did my own research about the future of experience design.

So generally what always fascinates me is seeing technology which is integrated in people's natural way of working and living and doesn't need any explanation like good UX usually is, right? So watching science fiction characters interact with technology looks exactly like that.

And if we think about Tony Stark, for example, using gestures to interact with Jarvis, building his tank or even Mr. Spock from Star Trek finding exactly the information he needs on an interface, although it might look kind of messy for our eyes. So let's be honest, that's really fascinating. Question number one:

What does interfaces in science fiction movies actually show? So let's have a closer look on those sci-fi interfaces and check why they will probably not show us the future. I actually listened to a really, really great talk by Dan Hon at the Interaction Design Conference last month in Milan. I will link this talk in the show notes in case you want to check it out.

The talk was mostly about why science fiction doesn't show us the future of design. So super interesting. And it was kind of funny because he replaced those futuristic interfaces with PowerPoint slides, but used the same information. And it became obvious that there were not so many useful information on those screens. And in the end, they, yeah, don't really make sense at all.

So generally there are different interfaces in movies. The one which actually show information which are relevant for the user observing and there are interfaces which are mostly to give us an understanding about what is actually going on.

The interface for the Terminator is actually not for him, it's actually for the viewer to understand what's going on. He doesn't need this information. So if you don't know what I mean, please just google a Terminator interface and you will know what I mean.

The future will not be what we see in the movies and I can tell you why. The future will be ruled by immersive technologies and all the other technological advantages. And very few people actually read the latest article about machine learning or generic engineering, so they don't really know what's going on in those areas.

Movies like Matrix or Iron Man or Star Trek shape how people understand the most important technological and social economic developments of our lives. I don't know if you had one of those conversations with family or friends about when robots will actually start a war to fight humanity.

I definitely had a few and in fact we don't need to fear that, we need to fear something else which is the conflict between a small superhuman elite empowered by algorithms and huge amount of data and the other class of disempowered people. What I actually wanted to say with this example is that most people have no idea about the future. So why are science fiction interfaces so fascinating for us?

And of course it's the usability aspect, but another super important point is, I guess, the storytelling? Science fiction is based in storytelling and it's all about the hero and their story and technology is just there to support that. And let's be honest: Science fiction is not design fiction. You or the user might actually not be the hero and at least that's the feeling I'm getting when I'm talking to Amazon Alexa or Siri.

So copying things from movies will result in losing trust and when science fiction and pop culture actually come together it can be extremely frustrating because real life is not like in the movies. So what are the problems at the moment?

Today we spend more than seven hours a day looking at screens and when I look at my friends or colleagues or even myself it's probably more than 10 hours a day I would say. And since the introduction of the smartphone we have started to fill every gap in our life from the moment we get up in the morning until it's super late and we go to sleep with our smartphones.

And studies have shown that actually 35% of the people check the web before they even get out of bed. And yes, I have to admit I'm definitely one of those people. The benefits come with some negative side effects like the growing inability to share our undivided attention with others, the inability to separate work and private life and the inability of children to learn empathy.

The inability to reflect thoughts, which is a prerequisite of mental health and creativity for even addiction and withdrawal symptoms. 37% of UK adults and 60% of teens self-report addiction. And there are even more problems that not only come from the amount of time we spend looking at screens, but from the design of screens themselves, like accessibility,

to old or handicapped people, time to action, cognitive load, muscle strain or limitation in human capabilities.

One hub sees screens and the smartphone as the go-to solution for human-computer interaction. The other hub is hoping for something different and some companies like Ford and Philips, for example, have already reacted by introducing physical user interfaces, which I find super interesting. And interestingly enough, both groups insist to refuse that the other group exists, which makes it super interesting.

I believe that user interfaces will fundamentally change. And the reason why they haven't done so far is because of a number of barriers which are now falling. So at the moment we are struggling with two complex interfaces, with jargon, with hierarchy problems, with consistency, with creating graphical elements.

And it's honestly a lot of fun getting inspired by science fiction interfaces. But let's get serious. After our little reality check, we can have a look how the future of interfaces are probably going to look like. So I am going to share with you the top five trends for all future interfaces. Let's get started. Trend number one is

all senses. Graphical user interfaces have many many limitations and they're not accessible to visually impaired and handicapped people. We already talked about that. They only use the visual sense and a reduced version of haptics. They can have straining effects in our hands, neck or eyes.

I guess many of us have already experienced something like that. So future interfaces will be designed with human biology and psychology in mind. And they will integrate more of our human senses. And I don't know who of you has the Apple Watch or another smartwatch, but once the iWatch becomes a mass phenomenon,

people will get used to consuming information through different senses, which I find super interesting. And other interfaces will use our brain waves or body movements, for example, but that's more like a really far future, I would say. So trying to do the wrong thing right doesn't make it better, but

If we think about the light switch for example, it's actually still a really really good example because no matter how intuitive you try to make an app that controls your smart light, the experience will be worse than getting up and hitting a light switch. And the large number of people that stop using their smart devices after a few days is proof of that actually.

and future interfaces will ignore the assumed integration with graphical user interfaces and will focus on making things simpler than existing solutions, for example by integrating voice design. So let's come to area number two, which is hierarchies.

Another thing which is really fascinating for me is that the interfaces in science fiction movies are actually kind of messy and don't have a lot of hierarchies which makes it so difficult to get a quick understanding about the situation. So you usually see a lot of visuals, so you see tiny typography and not more than three or four colors.

And science fiction, they don't really have a lot of hierarchies at all. And although they're super important things for getting a task done or getting the right information. So the future interfaces will focus on hierarchies.

which all good designs are already doing right now. But if we think about AI, artificial intelligence, it will get easier to understand and know what actually is the most important information for the single user. So the interfaces might be adjustable based on the needed hierarchies to solve a problem, to get a task done, etc. Area number three is voice design.

I am super fascinated by voice interaction because it feels so so so so natural and it feels like a usual conversation so it doesn't really feel like an interface anymore and I strongly believe that voice will be like search in yeah searches now but in like 15 years or so.

I don't know if you remember the time when we all typed a real web address like www.adobe.com or whatever but since the Web Explorer integrated the possibility to search in the browser most people use Google to look for websites which is interesting.

If you would tell a designer this like 15 years ago, no one would probably believe you. But in the end, convenience wins always. So what is easier than Google for a specific topic you look for? For example, Adobe Blog UI Kit. Rather than look on the website yourself for that specific article or for that specific UI kit. It takes much more time.

So imagine how easy it will be with voice. No typing, just natural conversation like with a friend who can ask you for specific specifications and find the right content for you. Even ask the questions if the system really didn't understand you.

And there is actually one movie which is kind of focused on like a voice user interface. I guess many of you know this movie, it's called "Her" where the main character Theodore interacts with his digital assistant mostly via voice. And what's so exciting is actually that this movie, yeah, those conversations feel super, super natural. It's like talking to a friend.

And besides that, Samantha, which is the name of the user interface, always understands the context. It's much smaller actually than any human being because of her AI integration. So comparing that with the current situation with our smart assistants at the moment, talking about Alexa or Siri,

We all know that there is still some work to do, still a lot of time, a lot of data to get the systems trained. But we have time, so can't wait for that actually. So area number four is augmented reality.

So the digital and physical world will blend together. Be it through augmented reality glasses or smart contact lenses or whatever and you will be able to read context information about a broken motor not through your phone but directly in the surrounding space of the object. So

Technology can be stressful with the anxiety of like pop-up notification and the inability to differentiate between work and private life. Yeah, and technology will not be the foreground anymore. It will assist people in their life and blend information into their world. It will disappear into walls, tables, microprojectors or glass. So yeah, I'm super excited about that area especially. It will be super interesting for us as UX designers.

So area number five is task focused. So what does it actually mean?

This is some kind of a major trend in human-computer interaction. You won't need to trigger every action manually anymore, but sensors will do that job for you. Examples include the garage door that can't track when you're getting close to your house or lights that turn on automatically when you're walking into a room. So anticipated design.

selects all the data and enables interfaces in the end to really understand what the next step might be. So the system gets better and better and helps the user to use interfaces as natural as possible with as less information and as less decisions as possible. So it will get easier to predict certain interactions and flows analyzing user data. And last but not least,

Number six is natural. So a race driver would never replace his physical wheel and buttons for a tablet for example or if you think about music a musician would never replace his guitar haptic and tangible interfaces have value and it allows us to use your motoric memory and multiple of senses like haptics and awareness of positioning and sound of click and

vision and those kind of things. So it allows you to interact with technologies in the most natural way. So back to physical inputs, which are easier to use, more accessible.

We remove a lot of those physical elements when it comes to digital interfaces like smartphones or tablets, etc. So there are tendencies towards going back to physical inputs. And this could be some kind of physical input which you use as some kind of input for augmented reality, for example. So I'm especially super excited to see how this area evolves.

So let's wrap this up. Generally, no interface is the best interface, the more natural it feels, the better. Generally, voice will become super important in the future, although this doesn't mean that voice only will be the future, but voice first probably. We will still have interfaces which are much more integrated in our surrounding.

Because of AI and machine learning, it will become easier to adjust and personalize interfaces for the user. So hierarchy and minimalism will become much more important. And we will integrate other senses like smell, touch and gestures. I don't know really how and a lot of the experts at the moment don't really know how exactly, but I'm pretty sure that we will figure it out and it will be a really exciting journey.

If you want to know more about that topic, please check out the Medium article I wrote about it. I will link it in the show notes, so please have a look. And...

Yes, generally, I hope you enjoyed this quick and short episode about the future of interfaces. Let me know if you have any questions or any feedback. I am so, so, so happy about any messages I'm getting from you on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram at ux.patricia. Feel free to just reach out to me and...

Please don't forget to rate this podcast on iTunes or share with friends or your colleagues if this episode inspired you. So thank you so much for listening and hear you in the future.