Surveyed NUI definitions.

1. Real NUI

2. Many descriptions…
It is said “NUI is the user interface
goal, not interface itself. NUI is
intuitive interface.“ (from Wikipedia)
Natural is such an ambiguous
adjective that this definition
doesn’t tell much.

3. Many descriptions…
It is said “Voice and Gesture are
NUI, because they are used in real
human interactions.”
Input modality itself is not natural. They may
convey unnatural UI, for example, special
gesture language, voice command to select item
from menu. But the reason part is a good hint.

4. Many descriptions…
It is said “NUI is not WIMP (Window,
Icon, Menu, Pointing device), and it
is the post-GUI paradigm”.
Contrasting with current main
stream UI is a hindsight, but
doesn’t show specific direction.

5. Many descriptions…
It is said “Touch is NUI, because users
directly manipulate objects. The
contents is the interface (Wigdor)”.
The definition suggests a hint wrt
method. But touch UI can be
unnatural.

6. Many descriptions…
It is said “NUI is invisible
UI”.
The definition looks mysterious,
but broadens the implications of
“direct manipulation” definition.

7. Many descriptions…
Steve Mann’s Reality-Based Interface or AR or
VR (for example, clickable world-objects) is NUI,
because it extends the reality which human is
familiar with.
RBI can be unnatural. However it
suggests we should think about
objects beyond GUI.

8. Many descriptions,…
It is said “NUI doesn’t require training. NUI is
intuitive. Machine adapts to human in NUI,
while human adapts to machine in traditional
UI“.
Those are attributes or
results of NUI.

9. What is NUI, then?

10. Get back to origin. Ideal NUI would be:
Interact with machine as if he/she
interacts with human or world everyday
• Method: No artifacts but eye, hand, and mouth
• Objects: No WIMP but real world objects = human
(communication with remote people), perceptive
(INTEL terminology) or robotized devices
(Filed as JPA 2017-204737)