Whilst it is still the case that most communication is terminal type text-based, along with multimedia adornments (photos and video), the range of user inputs continue to grow and become more naturalistic. As touch screen devices and more recently contact-free devices continue to evolve, instant messaging should emerge beyond its textual confines and beyond the graphical forms of communication described in the above proposal for SVG-based instant messaging.
Looking to the future, discussions on HCI are moving from ergonomics around a fixed workspace into areas that make much fuller use of the senses, especially kin[a]esthetics, which take account of whole body movements and physical gestures (consider e.g. greetings such as the Thai bow with hands palm to palm – the Wai); one branch, haptics, concerns the sense of touch and how feedback may be gained that way, offering new methods to aid accessibility. These emerging areas for interface design are already quite in evidence in game technology such as Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect, which offer considerable educational potential1.
Integral to the design of user interfaces there is
one particular area that merits close attention for
without it the system and the user base will fall
apart: security …
Note
1 Hui-mei Justina Hsu, The Potential of Kinect in Education, International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 1, No. 5, December 2011 http://www.ijiet.org/papers/59-R025.pdf