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Session: The New User Experience

Time: 2:45 PM

I started this page in the spirit that there will be much to learn at the conference from each other. The topic is fascinating and we have some outstanding UI and usability researchers and practitioners in the panel. The audience, I hope, will also have much to contribute. So please, help me get this page going and put in your ideas... --Sam Aparicio ( aparicio@angel.com ,+1-703-286-6415 samaparicio )

Introduction

You can see the official session description at the bottom of the link.

In a nutshell: while voice networks have dramatically evolved, the general user interface to communicate remains fundamentally the same, that of the phone.

Questions to explore

Groups of topics

The phone paradigm

• When it comes to voice communication, why do phones today work in the same way than a century ago? Is it because the fundamentals of the paradigm (tones, answering, finishing), the way in which physical gestures indicate intentions (answer = pick up the phone <-- think about this verb, do you really pick up a cellphone?) have provided very useful? Or is it simply the case that those responsible for putting phones together were more focused on the engineering aspects of making it work?
• Let's deconstruct what a phone does. What are the primitives? Does new technology allow new primitives? Is there then, a better metaphor to represent them?

Social aspects of communication

• What are the main social conventions about phone use? How do we respect them?
• I asked my father the other day, 'what bothers you most about your phone?' His answer: 'that it's ringing all day long!' It seems that voice communication has been interrupt driven. Are there other more nuanced modalities?
• Phone numbers are part of the interface. IM handles are part of the interface. In reality, they are identifiers, pointing at things? But what do they point at? What else is there to point to?

User interface of mobile phones

• Today we don't carry phones with us. We carry little computers. Their screens display widgets much in the tradition of the Desktop. Yet seldom do these devices combine voice and data in the same application. What will it take for multimodal apps to take off?

Phones in computers

This:

kind of sucks. (Not picking on xten, there's much much worse)

• If you had to boil it down for practitioners of softphone design, what would the top 5 guidelines be?

Voice User Interfaces

• There seems to be a backlash against pure voice automation (e.g. gethuman.com). What's the future of IVR?

Companies doing interesting voice stuff

• Truphone - A VOIP Caller within your cell phone
• Jajah - Almost complete interfacelessness
• GrandCentral - Proof that phone numbers are part of the interface
• SightSpeed - Video Communities
• Skypecasts - Unbundling the legs of communication
• Ydilo - Multimodal apps for mobile 3G carriers
• Keen and Ingenio - turning regular folks into phone experts by the minute
• Free411 Advertising subsidised Directory Assistance
• Bringo Computers talking to Computers, turning the tables on who has the power

Examples of voice embedded in software

• XBOX Live -- talk trash with your gaming opponents
• Macromedia Breeze -- webcasts
• Siebel CRM On Demand -- a CRM system with built in phone calling
• Earthlink Email By Phone A voice interface to your email
• Verosee Team collaboration