IPad's Natural User Interface at Work

The basic principles about NUI is the removal of abstraction layers. If you want to click an icon you don't need to use a mouse or a pen or a trackpad, there is no exotic hand to eye coordination. You simply touch what you want to activate.

For instance my son who is 1 year have no problem interacting with the Talking Tom application on my iPhone.

If he garble something it garbles back in a higher pitch. If he touches the screen the cat reacts. He don't know what he is doing but by removing the abstraction and introducing close to real time feedback the iPad, iPhone and Android creates an instant feedback loop.

One can only imagine how this could be used to teach, train and remove the obstacles of interaction.

It is however not necessarily the best tool for serious creation so I guess that computers will fork into two main areas. Work devices with layers of abstraction but very powerful and the leisure devices with no abstraction but relatively less powerful.

To most people latter will be able to replace their laptops, netbooks etc.

This was a great article to read. It helped crystalize some thoughts about how I interact with my iPad. I couldn't put my finger on it (no pun intended), until reading through this article. So, thanks for that.

Some of the transformational issues that are surfacing with apps for the iPhone and iPad are that people are simply porting over their web-apps or desktop apps...chrome and all. This is the most obvious thing to do if you're a software company that is trying to make sure your tools are on the devices that a significant amount of people have. But, some more thought needs to go into the UI design vs cramming the traditional UI elements into this new breed of computers.

Also, as I think Apple has done a great thing with the iPad, it's still an early version of things to come. There are times when I use the iPad that things don't feel as natural as they should...some lag, doesn't quite draw the line I had wanted, etc. Obviously, this will improve and I'm excited about what the future holds with these new NUI tools.

Where's this guy's analysis for Oracle's own products? They're usually on my worst offenders list.