Gartner Article: Environmental UI

The Evolving User Interface From Graphical UI to Environmental UI written by David W. Cearley

David writes about the future designs and User Interfaces which is going to make revolutions. An examination of the future of the user interface shows that, near term, the evolution and application of new UI models to niche markets will be incremental. Longer term, more-significant change will be driven by real-world Web applications.

For decades, researchers have tried to create user interfaces (UIs) that more-closely reflect human communications. However, few advances have gone beyond the lab to drive a shift in the UI model. The graphical user interface (GUI) — conceived in the 1970s and commercialized in the 1980s — is an exception. The GUI allowed a more-flexible and pleasing display with iconic representations of real-world concepts and flexible graphical output. Adopted first in high-value niches (electronic publishing, for example) and then broadly embraced by consumers, the GUI has been the dominant UI paradigm since the early 1990s. Gartner has more on David's idea on Environmental UI.