Reinventing the user interface

More than one in two devices returned to vendors are not malfunctioning – the buyers simply could figure out how to user them, according to the new Deloitte report on technology trends.

"A survey found that the tolerance level of most consumers… is limited to 20 minutes of effort. After this they tend to give, and conclude that a product is faulty," it says.

But the product may be faulty in the sense of being badly designed and "an unusable product may have as little value as a broken one, regardless of its underlying brilliance".

It says one source of the problem may be cheap processors that encourage manufacturers to pack in more features, regardless of whether they are desirable or practical.

Products should be designed from the ground up for simplicity, the report recommends. But the user interface is being transformed by emerging forms of control. These include:

• Haptics, the use of touch for feedback and control. The report suggests that a vibrating alert could warn drivers that they are straying out of lane…
• Motion sensors. Already used for gaming, these could have other users. The page of an ebook could be turned by the flick of a wrist, for instance.
• Speech recognition. This is likely to become more widespread, most commonly in cars but also in portable devices and computers, the report says.

The report adds: "Devices that respond to gestures rather than contact may also become a reality."

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