LWN: Comments on "Langridge: No UI is some UI"

Langridge: No UI is some UI

elvis_ — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 13:08:38 +0000

Who needs an interface? Just say it runs in the background.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

mathstuf — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 16:03:47 +0000

And yet no shame to be had when people talk to headsets invisible from the other side of their head, but instead confusion as to why you're answering their questions.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

nye — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 11:48:13 +0000

>Of course it'll have to wait until I'm alone, because I don't want to be the only berk in a hundred-mile radius talking to their phone in public (has anyone ever seen anyone actually do this?).

Status update: In defiance of the risk of public humiliation, I actually tried this. It was met with a laugh followed by "I can't believe anyone would really do that".

Langridge: No UI is some UI

bronson — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 20:57:29 +0000

I'm guessing a fair bit the improvement you noticed is with the microphone... Newer phones have better microphones and much MUCH better background noise rejection.

I've found the same thing, though... There was a step change somewhere around the Nexus 5 release where google voice went from being laughable to scary good. Downright creepy.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

peter-b — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:59:29 +0000

I have to confess to being an Android voice control user.

"Okay Google, remind me to buy greetings cards tomorrow evening"

"Okay Google, set an alarm for six thirty tomorrow morning"

It's so much convenient than scrobbling around on a touchscreen for a couple of minutes, and it works so well.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

apoelstra — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 17:57:56 +0000

> Of course it'll have to wait until I'm alone, because I don't want to be the only berk in a hundred-mile radius talking to their phone in public (has anyone ever seen anyone actually do this?).

I often compose text messages this way. I've seen several other people do it, technical and non-technical.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

nye — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 11:49:12 +0000

>everyone is poo-pooing these interface but they are immensely useful in many cases
>the other day i wanted to take my friend to a sushi restuarant called kamakuri. pulling out my phone and typing
>"kamakuri sushi hours"
>would have been much more annoying than just saying "ok google, is kamakuri sushi open now?"
>which i did, and google nailed it.

When I first read this comment on Friday I was all set to make a derisive comment about this, based on my last attempt to use speech recognition: as of about two years ago, Google's attempt was the best I'd ever seen, with an impressive accuracy rate of about one word in five, when speaking simple words as clearly as possible.

But since I have a new phone, I thought I ought to actually try what it's like now before commenting: holy mother of god, I've literally never seen any area of technology improve so much in two years. Not even close. It gets like 95% right - it even manages names and places, so long as they're reasonably common - and most of the time it does something vaguely useful. It actually can in some situations be quicker/easier to use voice than to type it in on a tiny touchscreen.

For the first time, I feel like real usable voice control is no longer in the perpetual 30-years-away zone alongside fusion power and automated natural language translation, but actually in the near future, and possibly even realistically usable in limited form now.

Of course it'll have to wait until I'm alone, because I don't want to be the only berk in a hundred-mile radius talking to their phone in public (has anyone ever seen anyone actually do this?).

Re: it sounds lovely.

nix — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 23:02:28 +0000

Like most things Theremin built, the thing is a lovely idea which is incredibly difficult to play well, and a non-good player will, indeed, end up with everything sounding the same. The terpsitone is, by all accounts, even more impossibly difficult to play even tolerably (it's hard to verify this because only one terpsitone survives).

There’s Only One Universal Interface For Computers

ldo — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 00:17:47 +0000

If it’s running Android, as seems pretty likely nowadays?

Did you know every Android installation comes with a command-line shell?

The car version or watch version of Android may have a somewhat different GUI from the handset version, but guess which interface would remain unchanged...

There’s Only One Universal Interface For Computers

nybble41 — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 23:33:29 +0000

It seems like interfaces are moving away from spatial/visual interaction and toward voice interfaces, at least as a secondary form of input. That could easily be adapted as a form of command-line, and would probably work as well as anything else in a car or for controlling a wrist-based computer.

There’s Only One Universal Interface For Computers

b7j0c — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 23:15:52 +0000

let me know how that works in your car or on your watch.

Re: Yes, but that could be said about any musical instrument.

pr1268 — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 02:31:12 +0000

Well, beauty is in the ~~eye~~ ear of the beholder.

I find the Theremin more fascinating by watching someone play it than listening to it.

There’s Only One Universal Interface For Computers

pr1268 — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 02:27:23 +0000

the command line

Agreed. Even Microsoft reincarnated the old MS-DOS command prompt as that PowerShell thingy... (probably the only neat feature of recent versions of Windows.)

Re: Yes, but that could be said about any musical instrument.

ldo — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 02:01:28 +0000

Having studied music myself for several years, I would say most emphatically not.

Re: it sounds lovely.

pr1268 — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 01:57:05 +0000

For about five minutes, until you notice that everything it does sounds the same.

Yes, but that could be said about any musical instrument.

It's just that playing a Theremin involves absolutely no physical contact (other than to turn it on/off), nor does it need lung power (like brass & woodwinds) or hands/fingers (keyboard instruments, lutes, etc.).

There’s Only One Universal Interface For Computers

ldo — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 01:43:29 +0000

People keep coming up with all kinds of “natural” or “intuitive” interfaces for humans to control computing devices. They like to point to everyday gadgets we use without thinking, like bathroom taps, or light switches, and ask why computers aren’t as easy to use. Sometimes they even mention cars, forgetting how many months of training (plus ongoing public-service education campaigns) it takes to safely manage one of those.

Along with these interface styles, they always have to produce a list of guidelines for how to use them. And then you notice that the popular applications inevitably disregard a lot of these guidelines.

And people keep discovering that any particular supposedly “easy-to-use” interface paradigm only works well for a limited number of cases—witness Microsoft’s disastrous effort to unify paradigms across desktop and mobile devices.

There is only one universal computer interface, that dates back to the early days, still works today across a whole range of different devices, and will continue into the foreseeable future: the command line.

Re: it sounds lovely.

ldo — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 01:34:14 +0000

For about five minutes, until you notice that everything it does sounds the same.

Musicians seem doomed to keep rediscovering this every few years...

A really good UI (slightly off-topic)

pr1268 — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 23:48:46 +0000

The Theremin.

Best user interface ever. Plus, it sounds lovely.

Nothing to worry about...

pr1268 — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 22:23:46 +0000

By then, the computer will know better: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Langridge: No UI is some UI

macc — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 15:50:19 +0000

Why again would someone want to munge UserInterface and application?

A really useful app should interface to all UI channels available.

Noise

Lou57 — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:33:52 +0000

EtherNeck!

Noise

jezuch — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:15:35 +0000

> Seriously, who wants to sit in an office surrounded by people talking to their computers all day and losing your own voice in the process?

Another reason is this:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010320

Langridge: No UI is some UI

drag — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 13:47:35 +0000

Don't use mainframe and cloud in the same sentence. I've done both, they are not the same.

Personally I like using voice on mobile, but I don't do it because that would mean that I would have to tie my phone into Google, which I try to avoid.

Common desktop systems are now powerful enough to do voice. Just need to improve the existing open source stuff to be able to take advantage of it. It won't ever be as convenient to use as big 'cloud' things, though simply because it won't have access to the same data... which is the real crux of the problem.

Another way to look at this issue for the more computer oriented among us is that shell scripting and command line utilities as a way to automate large systems is dying. It's going to be around for the next couple hundred years or so (no question about that...) but in terms of actually being able to manage the sort of systems that are common nowadays things like REST APIs and using real programming is far more advantageous for most things.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

ewan — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:09:13 +0000

It does, but it's much more efficient collected in high density servers in well run datacentres than it is all spread around the edge. If you're going to do a lot of computing, cloud is the energy efficient approach, the low energy alternative is to not do it at all.

Noise

Wol — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 10:49:55 +0000

> Possibly useful for some special situations, but not in general.

My wife uses her smartphone mostly for text. She uses voice entry almost exclusively.

I think your "special situations" will be, for many people, "normal situations". Unfortunately, like a lot of people, my wife is disabled. A lot of middle-age people are comfortable with the concept of smartphones, but are "all fingers and thumbs" (a slightly unfortunate turn of phrase :-) when trying to use one.

I think it's a safe bet that the niche for voice control will be a *large* niche.

Cheers,
Wol

Noise

gioele — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 10:06:05 +0000

Here you will find a "buy now" button: https://emotiv.com/

Plus a TED video https://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_you... and a review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZrat-VG4Ms

Langridge: No UI is some UI

aleXXX — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 09:46:20 +0000

> in the future, your computing devices may be too small to even have a useful input mechanism for your fingers

That would be bad design then if an input mechanism is needed...

Noise

bojan — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 09:43:53 +0000

I was hoping your link would include a buy button. ;-)

Langridge: No UI is some UI

osaingre — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:47:47 +0000

Check out that (slightly) older article on the matter.

"Who Needs an Interface Anyway ?"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/who-nee...

Noise

fb — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:37:30 +0000

> uh....you put the words "smartphone" and "privacy" in the same sentence?

I guess you can appreciate the distinction of:

A. evil corp/government can hypothetically: access my files in the cloud || track my phone || etc

B. my office co-workers || my in-laws || standers by: don't need to know/read/hear the IM messages I exchange with my wife.

It seems clear to me that the context of the GP comment was B. (Regardless of how much weight one decides to give to either of those). Smartphones do buy you the kind of privacy listed at B.

Noise

pr1268 — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:21:13 +0000

That's where neural trans-cranial sensor devices come handy. Imagine being able to communicate seamlessly with a computer with nothing other than a large headset device.

With the "10 orders of magnitude" increase in computing power, I believe we could swing that.

An added side benefit: since the neural interface only captures (and re-transmits) semantic data, there'd be no need for context-specific speech/grammar parsing. Semantics are context-free, unlike most formal grammars and written languages. Imagine error-free I/O without a spell-checker (or even a keyboard, for that matter!).

;-)

Langridge: No UI is some UI

scientes — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 07:35:58 +0000

All this mainframe computing ("cloud") also has very high energy consumption.

Noise

b7j0c — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 05:59:53 +0000

uh....you put the words "smartphone" and "privacy" in the same sentence?

Langridge: No UI is some UI

b7j0c — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 05:57:31 +0000

everyone is poo-pooing these interface but they are immensely useful in many cases

the other day i wanted to take my friend to a sushi restuarant called kamakuri. pulling out my phone and typing

"kamakuri sushi hours"

would have been much more annoying than just saying "ok google, is kamakuri sushi open now?"

which i did, and google nailed it.

in the future, your computing devices may be too small to even have a useful input mechanism for your fingers. voice will happen. it is already incredibly good for a lot of tasks...i'm continuously blown away at the range and accuracy of the verbal commands i can use with android

Noise

eru — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 05:35:46 +0000

Exactly. Another reason is privacy. Computers or smartphones are often used for things you would not prefer persons nearby to hear all about. For these reasons I think voice interfaces are a dead end. Possibly useful for some special situations, but not in general.

Noise

bojan — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 05:13:17 +0000

Seriously, who wants to sit in an office surrounded by people talking to their computers all day and losing your own voice in the process? Are we all going to be call centre workers now?

Short of mind reading, I'd rather type.

Langridge: No UI is some UI

fest3er — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 23:42:25 +0000

The primary reason 'natural language' interfaces don't work is the same reason computer languages still exist: most people do not learn their primary languages well enough to clearly instruct a person--never mind a computer--how to accomplish a task.

Write a program in assembler. Translate it to C. Translate it to COBOL. Translate it to a natural language. With each translation, note the increase in verbage. If you thought COBOL was verbose, just try writing a program in English. Or French, Or Russian. Or Chinese.

M. Langridge is correct. Until computers acquire, say, another 10 orders of magnitude of processing power and acquire high speed neural networks to recognize and relate patterns of all kinds, the most prevalent response by far from a natural language computer will be, "Unable to comply."