NUI, XUI, TUI ?

No, this is not the name of the latest song i have been teaching to my 3 1/2 year old daughter.

I am just going completely crazy these days about touch-driven devices, and found some new acronyms in this space:

  1. NUI: Natural User Interface. Examples are Surface and Jeff Han’s touch interfaces
  2. XUI: XML User Interface

So, i decided to invent my own. TUI: “Touch User Interfaces”, but a check in Wikipedia revealed somebody else already coined that acronym. I just wanted to add more touch or even no-touch as in gestures.

As i have some days off this week, I have some extra time to introduce the topic with some parodies on well know advertisements. This will also please my readers who ask me questions such as “why do we need all these computers ?”

Please enjoy the advantages of the Mac Air:

Why spent 300 € on a Wii Fit, if 3 € would give you the real thing ?

Surface on its best:

Or this one: Put a Surface in your pocket:

But seriously, how could these devices used in Business ? Let’s have a look at what Barclays is doing with it:

Or at Identity Mine: a Touch-catalogue and Blackberry becomes check-out for Elektra, a big electro-shop in South-America (sorry did not succeed to embed that video).

Or let’s throw in some “gestures” at GestureTek:

And from the same GestureTek: full body Avatar control. Check out this link with plenty of other demos.

But what if real and virtual get really mixed together. Have a look at the concept videos below:

XUI/NUI/TUI at Home

XUI/NUI/YUI at Work:

Or get completely immersed. Check out how EonReality is pushing the limits. Here on their homepage and here in this video. It’s getting so real that you almost get sea-sick.

Amazing 3D immersion technology from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Who said that singularity (the moment man & machine truly blend together) will happen in 2030 ?

I think it will be much sooner.

In 2030, having a brain implant will be as cool as having an iPhone today. Who in his right mind would have predicted in 1990 more than one cell phone per person ? That’s also only 20 years ago.

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