Top Articles To Read This Week: How perceptual user interfaces maximize engagement across platforms
Week 26, 2017
From visual search to gesture and voice control to biometrics, the way we interact with computers is rapidly changing. The new types of user interfaces are moving away from humans doing all the work and more towards having the computers meet us halfway. Perceptual user interfaces, which try to make the human-computer interaction as natural as human-human interactions are slowly emerging to make this a reality.
Here are the top articles to read this week:
1. Here’s How Amazon’s Alexa Hooks You
By Nir Eyal from Inc.
Voice is the current perceptual user interface taking over the world, and there is clear potential for it to change our daily lives. This is what Amazon (and others, but being the only retailer, Amazon more so) is betting on — that consumers will use Alexa so often to solve their problems, it will become a habit to keep asking Alexa for everything and stay on the Amazon platform, which, by design, will increase transactions and sales.
2. This is Vivo’s under-the-screen fingerprint scanner
By Stan Schroeder from Mashable
Fingerprint scanning may not seem like much, but an integrated fingerprint scanner within a screen is a pretty big deal. Chinese company Vivo has created a scanner that works through glass and metal, which gives us an idea of the future of human-computer interactions. This will make the scanner pretty much invisible, which is the best interface, because it does not create any distractions from the experience.
3. Apple Buys German Eye-Tracking Tech Firm With AR, VR Applications
By Todd Spangler from Variety
Eye tracking is an up-and-coming type of user interface that can be used for a myriad of functions. It’s true that eye tracking can be extremely useful for AR and VR, which is what Apple recently announced it will be focusing on. However, with all their hardware, Apple would be able to leverage eye tracking beyond gaming. Just wait until you can wake Siri by giving a quizzical look to your iPhone.
4. Here’s why Valve’s ‘Knuckles’ VR controller is such an exciting proposition
By Adam Rosenberg from Mashable
Gesture control is an interface that always seems to be not quite there. Wands are great at controlling hand and arm movements, but sometimes that’s not sensitive enough. However, Valve has announced that it is working to fix that problem with their “Knuckles” controller. Essentially, each finger is treated like its own joystick, which means we can all be like Tom Cruise in Minority Report sooner than 2054.
5. What to know about visual search
By Ilyse Liffreing from Digiday
As humans, we process images much, much faster than we do text, yet we still mostly interface with computers and platforms through text. Brands have only recently begun implementing visual recognition technology into their ecommerce platforms, but the market is set to grow by 216% by 2019. This means we’re well on our way towards more intuitive technology and interactions.
Curated by Hadley Stork
