If we are serious about promoting DX, surely we need to perfect the UI?
What are your thoughts on the evolution of UI and the UI problems that are impeding the promotion of DX in Japan?
Toshinao Sasaki (hereinafter Sasaki): First of all, there is no doubt that as DX is promoted, UI will evolve and the Internet will become easier to use.
Looking back at the time, more than 20 years ago in the 1990s, when personal computers finally spread to Japanese society and the Internet began to be used, there were many books on how to use a computer in bookstores at that time, but in the smartphone era, I think there are few people reading introductory books, including those on PCs. This means that the UI has evolved and become easier to use, and whether it's Android OS or iOS, it's now intuitive to use, so you can use it to a certain extent even if you start using it without any prior knowledge. And it's becoming easier to use every year.
The evolution of UI started with the CUI of the MS-DOS era, then moved to the GUI of Mac and Windows in the late 1980s and 1990s, and with the emergence of smartphones in the mid-2000s, touch controls became possible on the display. The difference was whether to use a mouse or a finger, and the operation system was basically the same as that of a PC GUI, so it can be said that the UI of PCs and other devices has only evolved once in the past few decades.
Is there a possibility that UI will change dramatically in the future?
Sasaki: Yes. Since the emergence of generative AI, it has been said that the OS will be the center of UI in the future, and when considering the future evolution of UI, one thing is that voice input will become the norm. Also, since the UI of Apple's Vision Pro is only gesture movements, another direction is the gesture UI that Apple is considering next.
There is a possibility that the gesture UI and the direction of voice support for generative AI will be linked, and I think the final landing point will be in the direction of talking to computers using voice and body language.
Will it become the norm to talk to devices?
Sasaki: Yes, it's exactly the same as when we humans talk to each other. I think that we will eventually reach a point where all the menu screens will disappear and we will talk to computers in the same way we talk to people, using body language.
Furthermore, if it's voice and body language, the current form of smartphones will no longer be necessary, so the form of devices will become ultra-small and we may never see them on a daily basis.
Will it become a form that can no longer be called a device?
Sasaki: Yes, temporarily. But it's still hard for humans to give commands unless something is in front of them. That's because it's voice and body language, so the response to that needs to be something like natural language plus natural physical expression, so I think that the final landing point for devices will be robots.
So, in a few decades, we may see a world where we walk around with small robots, or carry a small robot on our shoulders and keep talking. If that happens, I think the difficulty of using UI will basically disappear completely.
