Market research firm Tractica is predicting a multimodal future for user interfaces. In a new report, the firm predicts that, while touch-based interaction will remain the main way that users interact with devices, technologies like voice biometrics and hand gesture recognition are emerging as complementary interfaces.
Tractica singles out voice recognition as the key contender of the emerging modalities, given its growing prevalence in the form of voice command systems, whether in the emerging smart car or the many everyday home appliances connecting online. Principal analyst Peter Cooney also points to voice biometrics for authentication as “a key growth area for mobile device interfaces.” All told, the company predicts that speech recognition will attain an attach rate in mobile devices of 82 percent by 2020, while voice recognition will get 36 percent.
Other modalities are predicted to have some strong attach rates, too: The aforementioned gesture recognition modality is predicted to attain a mobile attach rate of 37 percent by the end of the forecast period, and localized haptics – the vibration feedback provided when, for example, an iPhone receives a text message – will do even better, at 45 percent. Three-dimensional touch and touchless modalities, meanwhile, will have a mobile attach rate of 28 percent, while eye tracking will get 18 percent.
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