Get Ready for the Golden Age of Touchless UI
How the time is ripe for contactless user interface design to blossom.
The coronavirus pandemic has made us more aware of the physical distance between us and those around us, particularly those who aren’t part of our nuclear quarantine clan. And when we’ve had to venture out for groceries and other necessary goods, we’ve learned to be hypersensitive to everything we touch.
In the early days of the stay-at-home order here in Chicago, we noted how the necessities forced upon us during this crisis would give birth to all manner of innovation. The way in which we interact with technology is bound to change as a result of our newly-formed habits and aversions. Two interaction models stand out in particular.
Robert Redford is better known for his performance in films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Natural. The 1992 film Sneakers, however, remains one of his most underrated.
It features an eclectic dream team of co-stars including River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, and more. It also features a scene in which Redford, who plays Martin Bishop, the leader of a ragtag band of white hat security hackers, clones the voice of actor Stephen Tobolowsky to gain access to a high-tech facility. Redford presses play on a mini-cassette recorder, Toblosky’s patchwork voice recording utters, “My voice is my passport,” into the voice recognition security box, and voila, he’s in.
Voice recognition technology dates back to 1952 with the invention of the Audrey system by Bell Labs. It was at best still experimental forty years later in 1992. With the introduction of Siri in 2011, Alexa in 2014, and Google Assistant in 2016, voice recognition technology became widely accessible on smartphones and connected devices.
Yet, the rate at which consumers engage with the voice recognition software available to them remains low. Some explanations point to a lack of trust and privacy concerns—the notion of Siri and Alexa secretly cataloging our most intimately-guarded secrets. Still, others point to demographic dynamics—young users being more comfortable with the technology.
While those are all reasonable explanations, we believe in a third, perhaps more compelling reason: there’s simply not enough perceived user value to compel people to cross the learning divide or exchange their privacy for the convenience of hands-free operation. After all, we’re more than willing to give up private personal information in exchange for access to other services we deem valuable enough.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Will we give Siri, Alexa, and Assistant another shot now that we’re more sensitive to touching surfaces that others also interact with frequently? Will first responders who come home to their families from a long day on the front lines think twice about tapping the volume button on their Sonos players? What about the remote control in the family room? Or the thermostat? Or how about handling your smartphone after a visit to the grocery store touching dozens of products? What about commercial applications like hospital, point-of-sale, and banking systems?
Our hunch is that this pandemic will give power to the human voice in more ways than one.
If only I had a dollar for every time someone said, “it’ll be kinda like Minority Report” in a brainstorming session. 99% of the time, they’re referring to the pivotal scene in which Police Chief John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, air-swipes and arm-waves his way through a gestural interface suspended in mid-air to uncover the location of a murder yet to be committed.
For many of us, it was our first introduction, albeit a fantastical one, to the potential of gestural interfaces. While gestural technology is newer than voice recognition, it also required a period of experimentation before becoming commercially viable. But its day arrived in recent years. And we believe that the conditions are ripe for gestural interaction paradigms to gain new ground.
If you’ve ever felt like you were on an episode of Punk’d, frantically waving your hands under the faucet of a public restroom to no avail, you’ve experienced a gestural interface. That’s a very simple use case, one that responds to basic motion in order to flip open a valve in the faucet.
Yet, more complex use cases are coming into production every day.
Take BMW’s Gesture Control technology. It was introduced in 2015—I believe an industry first (can someone corroborate this?)—with the launch of the new 7 Series as part of the iDrive infotainment system.
I’ve always admired BMW’s driver-centric design philosophy. As “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” BMW pays close attention to the driving and operating experience. Conscious design cues like the slight cant of the console toward the driver demonstrate BMW’s driver-first point of view.
Gesture Control is yet another evolution of this philosophy, one that we believe has potential applications beyond the luxury auto category. Especially now.
Six Applications for Voice and Gestural Interface Design
- ATM Machines—Let’s assume, against the opinion of some, that the world continues to circulate paper currency after the pandemic. ATM manufacturers might do well to make their touchscreens and keypads self-sanitizing or find a way to enable indirect manipulation of functions.
- Self-Service Checkout Kiosks—Whether we’re talking about the McDonald’s kiosks rolling out across the globe or the digital menus popping up on restaurant tables or the DIY checkout lines at Target, self-service kiosks are on the rise. Like ATM machines, too many of them rely on touchscreen interfaces, a technology which only a few years ago seemed advanced.
- Home Automation Systems and Smart Devices—We now know that the risk of viral spread isn’t limited to strangers outside of the home. Instead, our own family members are among the most at risk of cross-infection. That’s true not just of COVID-19, but of the ordinary flu and cold as well. While many integrate with Alexa, Siri, and Assistant, the fallback remains touch control.
- Remote Controls—When was the last time you cleaned your remote control? If your pile of remotes is like ours, there are still tiny bits of popcorn between the buttons from that movie night three years ago.
- Door Knobs—If we can activate a faucet with motion, we ought to be able to automate opening and closing a door latch without having to touch the handle. We can still rely on facial recognition or voice to unlock the door, as is the case with some smart locks.
- Fast Food Operations—With many people working in close quarters behind the front counter, fast-food companies might seek to revamp user-inputs and prep machines to reduce reliance on physical touch to cook and prepare foods.
While this list certainly isn’t exhaustive, it’s a place to start. The more we become conscious of our physical interaction with everyday interfaces and objects, the more we will notice opportunities for innovation.
And that certainly won’t be limited to voice and gestural manipulation. We’re bound to see more creative use of NFC (Near Field Communications), RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), and other technologies yet to come. After all, Amazon has already developed a highly-effective prototype of how a “contactless checkout” experience might work.
Just as the Graphical User Interface had its golden age with the advent of the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows, it’s the perfect time for a new set of interaction paradigms to shine. Whether in specific response to the threat posed by the Coronavirus or not, such advances in UI are bound to make for safer, better experiences—by design.
Advancement in touchless interfaces can benefit more the user, too. Companies can benefit as well since at this moment, investing in these interfaces is a decision that contains both altruism and opportunism. Rather than choosing between public good and commercial gain, companies with the will to act now can do the right thing for both their consumers and their bottom lines. I think that’s pretty powerful — and can be a call to action for the companies positioned to lead these changes.
Simple Solutions In the Meantime
While we await bold technological innovation in touchless interaction design, there are some simple everyday tools people can use to reduce their environmental “touchprint.”
- The tried and true handkerchief—an infallible symbol that one is actually old in age or simply old-fashioned at heart. This opinion piece in the NY Times extols the present-day virtues of this artifact from a bygone era.
- The Peel Keychain Tool—this handy brass keychain tool is designed with a hook & pointer that enables you to open doors, press buttons, and checkout while avoiding germs. It also doubles as a bottle opener, naturally.
