i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

If you have an experience using touch-screen devices such as cellphone, e-book readers, or ATM, you might be a person who is awkward or clumsy to manipulate some electronic devices which are not equipped with touching screens. Nowadays, it is so natural that people try to touch the screen when they grab a brand-new mobile device because touching screens has seeped into their daily lives. In order to clarify this phenomenon, this article refers to experts’ view in field of user interface or human computer interaction and mentions the next generation of user interface. In sum, the article states that “the next generation of screens might not even need a touch. Instead, they will understand the gestures of people standing in front of them and pick up on eye movement and speech".

• “It’s part of the general trajectory we’re on in the computing industry — this whole notion of making computers more open to natural human gestures and intentions. The future’s going to be in fusing together several different natural human behaviors — how people point, gesture and coordinate with each other.” said Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research.
• “Though scientists have been working on natural user interface, Apple made touching, swiping, and flicking at screens mainstream. All of the technologies existed, but by bringing it together in a seamless fashion, the iPhone had a lot to do with it”, said Harsha Prahlad, a research engineer who works with robots and sensors at SRI International, the research institute.
• “People inevitably point at the screen, thinking something would happen — it’s such a natural behavior. My own 2-year-old daughter amazingly could use the iPad and somehow it was intuitive.” said Shumin Zhai, a research scientist who studies human-computer interaction at the I.B.M. Almaden Research Center.

See this article