Reflections on Executive Briefing: Natural User Interface and Social Media

Once again, we brought together a small group to discuss two more upcoming topics for the software industry. This time it was Natural User Interfaces and Social Media.

The most interesting observation is that there is a bigger gap between the future-oriented Natural User Interfaces and the closer-to-the-mainstream Social Media topic. That colors this post: In this group we had much more discussion on Social Media than we did on Natural User Interfaces. That's a function of the group, and the relative adoption of both topics.

Natural User Interfaces

Natural User Interfaces are a rather nascent topic in our industry. However, I do think that over the next decade, it will become more and more important. The mouse and keyboard metaphor is more than 30 years old. Gaming has clearly gone way beyond mouse and keyboard.  (How long would you play rock band or guitar hero using a mouse and keyboard? Flight Simulators, racing games, and more use custom controllers that are supposedly more natural than the mouse and keyboard metaphor we’re forced to use in our regular line of business applications.

We’re starting to see some more forward looking computing devices.  iPhone, iPods, Zune, Surface and Windows 7 multi-touch are all examples of a more natural user interface. In all cases, we’re using more natural motions to directly work with the device.

The conversation lagged somewhat. We didn’t have many of the devices at our disposal that day. Also, it was a bit harder to create a dynamic discussion because it was harder to get conversations about how to these new devices might map to what we do.

Social Media

Social Media was completely different. This was very lively, and it’s clear how we can all make use of social media for our business and personal endeavors.

The clearest point here is that the twitter model has won. It’s more interesting than Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform today.

The reason is that it provides the best way to reach an authentic audience from an authentic perspective.

Andy Seidl (@faseidl) has described twitter as ‘a world wide cocktail party’. That’s a very apt description. You can wade in at any time, you can choose to behave like a professional, or be that person in the corner with the lampshade on his head. You can leave conversations that aren’t interesting. But most importantly, you can engage in real conversations with those people with whom you interact.

That’s the most interesting part: Social Media must be personal in order to be useful. You can only create an audience by engaging in real conversations. Once you engage in real conversations, you can get real results.

Social Media also allows you to get around the major barriers to efficiency today.  Our corporate structure exists to allow specialization, which builds walls and silos around different areas, business units, and disciplines. With a twitter presence, I’ve found it easier to reach elected officials, vendors, customers, and collaborators. I haven’t used anything else that has made it easier to reach as many people in as many ways.

Bud Gibson (@Innovators) has made significant investments in many areas of social media. He’s also claiming that twitter is a better investment than any other social media. In fact, he’s finding that twitter is better than ‘pay for click’ advertising to reach new prospective customers.  It gets back to Andy’s cocktail party analogy: It’s all about the conversation.

The bulk of this was about Twitter, although we did discuss other media as well. However, most of the other social media create more walls around different communities. They are ways to interact with people you already know. Facebook and LinkedIN are platforms to talk with people you know. Twitter starts a conversation, and as part of the platform, allows anyone to join and participate.

Was there a call to action?

There was less of a call to action here. NUI seems a bit farther in the future. The call to action was to ‘keep an eye on it’. It likely will be important, but not immediately for broad reach applications.

For social media, the call to action was to develop a strategy about how to participate. Your customers are participating. Your competitors likely are too. That means you need to participate, and you need to differentiate yourself with your content.

Oh, and you can follow my updates on twitter as well: @billwagner