The Beginning of Anticipatory Interfaces?
Ready for a new buzzword? How about anticipatory interfaces?
I’ve seen a really interesting feature now in two different applications—systems analyzing your text as it is being typed. Let me repeat that: as I am typing information, things are happening—on the fly—that might be of use to me.
In the case of SystemOne, adding to a wiki entry serves up relevant content—without ever hitting a submit or save button. Here’s how TechCrunch describes SystemOne:
Essentially, it’s a wiki that analyzes what you are writing in real time and offers up related search results from other pages in that wiki, the web in general, your uploaded OPML file of RSS feeds, your emails and any files the system is given access to.
The second example is Stikkit, which I just stumbled across. Whereas SystemOne scans keywords to find relevant content, Stikkit tries to use natural language recognition to ‘guess’ what type of content you are adding. So, as I add text—things like ‘meet Erin for lunch’ or ‘pick up dry cleaning’—Stickkit is parsing this information and trying to classify the text as an event, to do, contact, etc. Check out the Stickkit demo movie to see what I mean.
The potential uses of this type of ‘interaction’ are…intoxicating. These are the beginnings of systems that can in effect ‘listen’ as you’re typing and anticipate your next action.
I’m having fun imagining how this might be used in the travel industry—or any industry for that matter. Imagine entering data for a client (CRM, client intake forms and such) and having this sort of ‘real-time conversation’. No submit. no save buttons. No searching for relevant information. All the information you might want to pull for a client is there, coming to you. And the next steps that follow the human conversation? Booking travel. Canceling an order. Looking up tracking information. These actions—in the form of links, buttons, steps, workflow, whatever—are anticipated and brought into focus, filtered out as choices if they don’t apply, or submitted (if that looks to be the next likely course of action).
Sound too far fetched? Having worked on a project that used natural language recognition to interpret dates, I will admit that language is a quirky, complex thing, fraught with unexpected frustrations. Are we going to meet ‘this Monday’, ‘next Monday’, just ‘Monday’, or ‘the Monday after last’? And this doesn’t even consider global systems that support multiple languages! Put that aside though. Combine natural language recognition, complex search/filter algorithms, and eventually human intervention, yes, human intervention—and you have an even more promising technology.
I mention this last bit about human intervention as there is a popular article on Web3.0 making the rounds right now, describing a sort of ‘pseudo AI’ that emerges when people augment systems, as is the case with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Google Image Labeler. See, had I been using an anticipatory interface to type that last sentence, I wouldn’t have needed to search for those links!
Good interface design is like a conversation. I guess these kinds of interfaces actually listen to what you’re saying typing!
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What Does Web2.0 Have to Do With Enterprise Software Applications?
This question came up around the office, and, since no one bothers to read anything I send out (O’Reilly’s original post? This pretty picture from Adaptive Path?), I felt compelled to come up with an answer on the spot…
First off, Web2.0 is NOT about AJAX or any specific technology, at least not directly. It’s about…
- Better interactive experiences. Google maps has been a success precisely because it works in a way that is more natural to people. Tagging? Much easier than classification (at least for filing things away). Inline editing—”you mean I can edit what I see!” The list goes on…
- The whole ‘social’ thing. I can easily share photos, bookmarks, ideas, and more with the world, or just my circle—and by the way, my circle just expanded to include people around the globe!
- Reusable content. On my time, on my terms. Yes, I’m referring to RSS, microformats, blogs, etc.
- Sharing code (and ideas). Why should we spend our time rebuilding what’s already built—let’s move onto the exciting stuff, the stuff that companies will never think of, get around to, or care to build. Let’s innovate! (Mashups and open APIs). And let’s work together.
- The “niche stiff” that no one would ever have the financial interest to pursue, through traditional channels anyway (Yes, I’m referring to the ‘Long Tail’).
Hmm. Let’s look at this another way:
- Applications that are easier to use
- Tools that foster collaboration and knowledge sharing
- Empowering people to be more effective at what they’re doing
- Reducing development time
- Freeing up developers to invest in technologies that differentiate and create value
- Communicating in a trustworthy way with your customers
- Creating new markets
- Co-creating value with your customers
Yes, Web 2.0 it is a buzzword. No, it isn’t a ‘new’ thing, necessarily.
There. I wrote an entry about Web2.0. But seriously, there are better posts on this topic.
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Microsoft vs Scenario-Based Design?
In a recent Business2.0 interview with Ray Ozzie from Microsoft, the question was is asked. “What’s different at Microsoft?”
“They see things from more of a platform-and-capabilities perspective, sometimes to a fault. At the opposite end of the spectrum, like Apple with the iPod, that’s a scenario-based design. They start with the user experience of listening to music and aim for the minimum necessary to accomplish that experience. Microsoft’s culture is “Build it, and they will come.” There are still a lot of people there who build technology that’s very capable, but it isn’t packaged in such a way that people see the value of it.”
Like the Contractor and Architect post over at Engadget, I enjoy comparisons highlighting the different business philosophies at work inside these major companies.
What’s interesting is the last line—which seems to place blame on people for not being able to see the value in bloated software. That and the bit about aiming “for the minimum necessary.” This is true of many Web 2.0 companies, but not necessarily true of Apple. Apple seems to anticipate what I need, but doesn’t shove it in my face when I don’t need it.
Understanding a bit about where Ray Ozzie is coming from, I’m sure I’m mincing words. And he does go on to mention the UI redesign of Office 12.
I personally have no problem with feature laden products. I do have a problem with feature laden products that are notoriously difficult to use. And consequently just don’t work for people. Which is better? Software that does just what you need in an easy manner, or software that tries to anticipate everything you could ever want it to do, and in the process makes accomplishing even the simplest of tasks difficult? It’s a classic Engineering (feature-focused) versus Design (experience-focused) argument.
Have your cake and eat it too!
I personally am looking forward to the group (from either camp) that packs in all the features without resulting in a more complicated interface.
Microsoft is coming from the bloated feature camp, and is now streamlining the user interface. Look at the redesign of Microsoft Office 12
“We set about rethinking the UI from the user’s perspective, which is ‘results-oriented,’ rather than from the developer’s perspective, which tends to be ‘feature-oriented’ or ‘command-oriented’ – thereby enabling people to focus on what they want to do rather than on how they do it.” (What? You haven’t watched the video? )
Most Web2.0 companies are starting from the ground up (or user experience backwards) with a clean slate. The challenge for these companies will be adding features (that are needed!) while preserving their most valuable asset – a simple UI.
Either way, this calls for some seriously skilled interface design. I have some ideas around how this will be pulled off, but that’s a topic for another day…
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Is the browser the best platform for applications?
A Curious Conversation
While at SXSW, Garrett, Matt and I (mostly Garrett and Matt) got into an interesting conversation about the future of web-services and service based apps. The discussion floated around thin, smart, and thick clients, and whether the browser (which Matt commented was originally built as a document reader) is the right platform— moving forward —for these rich applications. Garrett argued that the browser has been adopted, and is constantly evolving. Matt wondered if we wouldn’t move forward more quickly with a new platform for web apps, which of course opens up discussions around (1) who should build this platform, and (2) who has the power (M$, cough) to get a new platform adopted.
The discussion went something like this: Desktop apps can offer richer UI experiences. Web-based apps offer social sharing and collaboration features, mashup potential, yada, yada anywhere and on any platform or device without installation or update issues.
A Deeper Conversation
All this brought to mind two separate presentations I’ve listened to lately (both freely available from IT Conversations), which give some depth to this discussion:
First, The Platform Revolution where “leading developer and business evangelists discuss and debate the very definition of the words ‘platform’ and ‘developer’ in a Web 2.0 world.”
→ Check out The Platform Revolution
While there’s no clear point to take away from this conversation, there are some nice little tidbits. One that struck me was Halsey Minor’s (CEO, Chairman, & Founder, Grand Central Communications) comment about Enterprise’s reluctance to embrace web services or web2.0 paradigms. He says:
“There are those people who are practical on one extreme and those people who are purist on the other extreme. The practical people don’t do anything because they see all the problems with any sort of new technology. The purist don’t ever do anything that works because they don’t realize how many practical people there are in the world that they have to deal with… We try to be practical purists. We know that this new architecture is coming but we also recognize that there are a lot of ideas from traditional, say, enterprise software that aren’t going to go away, like people want reliability, they want service level agreements, they want guarantees…”
This quote struck a cord. Since joining with Geniant, I’ve been exposed to the Enterprise side of things—and it’s appalling. The Enterprise level Software Apps I’ve encountered are in the dark ages—pre usability days! This is something you’ll probably see quite a few posts about in the upcoming months, starting with this one.
Second, Orchestrating the Stack is a more heavyweight presentation from the often dead-on technology strategist/analyst Geoffrey Moore.
→ Check out Orchestrating the Stack
If you don’t recognize the name, you’ve definitely used or encountered his ideas—most notably his ‘Crossing the Chasm’ model illustrating the technology adoption curve and the gap between early adopters and mainstream acceptance
In this presentation, Moore describes where the tech industry might be heading in this decade—not this year or next—but farther out in what he callas ‘horizon three’. He describes a technology stack that includes everyone from Microsoft and IBM to Intel and Cisco.
If you listen to this presentation, you’ll definitely need the slides, as he constantly refers to them. This is one presentation to listen to if you want a view of where things might be headed—a view that offers much more than the buzz and hype around Web2.0 apps. He makes some pretty interesting prognostications.
Enjoy!
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