This new type of phone has no buttons, no touch screen,
and perhaps not even a screen to show text with. It is
totally audio, but with a different approach from AVR
systems.
No more: For this dial one, for that dial seven...
It discusses what it understands with you in a
communicative way,
letting you use your own words, and
telling you what it understood, asking you if the action it
wishes to take is correct.
I wrote here several times about the intelligate company
which I had the honor to check technologically for
investors. It utilized the limited context that it was set for,
say buying a plane ticket, and would discern out of free-
text messages and a dialog asking you questions and
getting you to point it in the correct direction - in free-text
as well, until it got it right.
Hearphone will use a similar technique asking you a single
question with several embedded assumptions, which will
clarify what it is required to do and how. It would be like
talking to an informal knowledgeable human.
One of the main features of this new UI is that is
constantly "asking you" several questions to be solved
together "at once", using assumptions.
Currently Google does something similar when "suggesting"
- asking: Did you mean ... ? But that is only one type of
question and not a full conversation. With HearphoneUI
(HearUI) the question would be with context and your wish
would be narrowed through conversation: Are you looking
for a movie with that or a similar name, or for information
about an event that happened in history. Your answer: I'm
looking for a movie that I want to take out. HearUI: Oh! do
you want to watch the movie or scenes from it, or are you
looking for information about the movie?
Of course, for this to work, some type of proxy will need to
take the information (in this case given by google) and
break it down into categories, keywords and concepts and
construct logical (as well as mark as illogical) "strings of
thought".
All this is doable AI, to a degree that would be acceptable
even for the first stage. Of course as time passes this will
be getting better and better, with much competition.