I was watching “Iron Man” last night, and had some revelations on HCI (Human Computer Interaction). Tony is constantly talking to his suit, and it is responding. It gives him the data that he needs, when he asks for it.

Clearly, voice is the way to go. However, there are no voice interfaces that currently really work. Ford’s Sync platform is gaining some ground, but when it comes to interacting with computers on a regular basis, it has not.

The major HCI platforms currently are keyboard and touch/pen based.

Why is it that voice has not taken off?

Easy: it is not natural. While I would love to be able to talk to my computer, it takes me learning a syntax that is not normal for me. I have to work with it, rather than it working for me.

Not cool when the computer is controlling me. It should be the other way around.

The Nexus One is taking this to the next step, where you can talk to the phone for any text field. However, you are still required to use another method to get to that text field.

The issue comes from lexicon, as well as dialect. I might say “Open my email”, but thats me. It would be a HUGE programming feat to make a computer actually comprehend.

The other thing that it got me thinking about was the idea of settings and data following you. When Tony Stark first fires up his suit, he has all his data and settings imported from his house.

We can sort of achieve this with portable apps, but it sucks running everything from the USB drive. Again, the Android platform does this really well, since it imports your Google preferences when you turn the phone on and log into your Google account. I wish that more tech recognized the user, and did all the configuring right away, rather than having to change everything.

Its funny that the closest thing to the Iron Man tech is coming out of Google.

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