Chapter 2

The Natural User Interface

Keywords

Definition, natural user interface, not reality-based, not mimicry, Newton vs. Palm Pilot

Free like freedom, not like beer.

—Richard Stallman

Description

The term natural is often understood to mean mimicry of the “real world.” In our view, it is a design philosophy and a source for metrics enabling an iterative process to create a product. In this book, we discuss touch and gestural interaction as one modality enabling the construction of a natural user interface. However, we believe that a NUI can be created with other input modalities as well. Indeed, one could imagine following the design guidelines we lay out to create a new kind of interface for the mouse and keyboard, voice commands, in-air ...

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