It’s amazing how much of the future technology in Star Trek has already become reality.
The computer tablets used by the crew in Star Trek Next Generation seemed almost fanciful when we first saw the show, but, by next year, it’s predicted the majority of US households will own a tablet.
So what other technologies from Star Trek are we likely to see emerge that will affect how Technical Authors and other technical communicators assist users in the future?
Universal translator
The most obvious Star Trek technology we’re likely to see soon is the universal translator, which decoded what people (and aliens) said in real-time. For £1.99, you can already get a voice translator for the iPhone, and the free Google Translate for Android app will translate written text via your smartphone’s camera.
Build this technology into Google Glass, and you’re getting close Star Trek’s communication badges.
Natural language interactions with technology
Some of the most challenging developments are likely to lie with how we might use natural language to interact with technology. In the Star Trek, the crew were able to talk to a computer in casual conversation. Below is a (very sexist I’m afraid) example from Star Trek TOS:
Apple’s Siri and Google’s Now give us the ability to make some basic natural language queries, and it’s likely their understanding of context will improve over time.
The end of writing?
There’s very little writing you see in Star Trek, so will we see writing becoming rarer? Will we do nearly everything by talking to a computer? The problem is, it’s a lot easier to assimilate information if it’s written down and if it’s succinct. The Captain’s log and other reports are likely to be long, rambling documents if the computer simply transcribes the words into text.
We’d need to become better at speaking more succinctly, improve our skills in listening back and editing our own voice, or have a device that could summarise our words without losing the meaning and accuracy of what we want to communicate.
What do you think?
What do you think Star Trek can tell us about the future of User Assistance? Use the comment box below to share your thoughts.
You asked about UA — I’d like to see more intelligent recommendations based on context. So, knowing where you’ve been on the site and what you’ve looked at; using that information to calculate what you’re probably looking for now, or might need help with — and hopefully doing it in ways that feel human(ish) and non-creepy. Essentially, the kinds of “oh, you’ll probably find X really helpful” recommendations that a person would be able to make.
I think that, to do this, we’re going to have to get better at understanding and explicating human pattern recognition, which often (IMO) seems to be underpinned by implicit learning, which makes it much harder to identify and deconstruct. Example: the other day I watched the new Star Trek movie for the first time. In the first second or two of the first scene, I knew exactly who that was, running. How’d I know? Not sure. Body size and shape and way of moving, perhaps. But my brain did all the maths for me and just gave me the answer. We need to get better at replicating this kind of process in personal computing, but to do that, we have to understand it.
The first attempt at this was Microsoft Clippy (“It looks like you’re writing a letter”), and some day a company will take the courage to have another attempt at getting contextual assistance right.
Indeed. I feel that we can do better, and indeed that we are doing better — say, if you look at Siri and (for instance) phone apps that use location to understand your context.
Also, I just noticed that I created a fictitious website in my original comment, because when you unthinkingly tab to the next form field, the label goes away, so I just thought that was the subject field.
We’ll edit out the website address.
Siri is their “Google killer” – it does away with the need to go to a search engine, so I wonder if they see it as a platform for app UI and UA, whether Apple will make Siri available to other developers.
I didn’t mind about the web address (but thanks) — I was just experiencing minor UX amusement 😉
Yeah, opening up Siri to third party apps would create some amazing possibilities. Though I suspect Apple won’t, because it might open the door to Siri ‘behaving’ in a lot of ways that weren’t on-brand. Then again, that’s what the app store review process is for.