Feb
21
Natural language commands
Filed Under General |
In most recent issue of Interactions there is an article by Aza Raskin on language command line. Aza postulates using the power of natural language and cross-application commands to enhance the usability of UIs. The flagship product of his company, Enso, shows exactly what he means.
The article got me thinking. I've been using Enso for couple months now and I simply can't use my computer without it any more. It takes the friendliness of a standard Windows to a whole new level.
It's much harder to explain it with mere words. You'd better go to their site and watch a screencast or even better - try it out. It's free.
There are to features of Enso which make it so damn useful for me: One, I don't have to remember the exact name of a command I want to execute. Two, I can give names to various important items (files, URLs) and use them in commands.
Enso allows me to start an application using any part of its name. For example, I don't have to remember that Visio's real name is Microsoft Office Visio. When I start typing "Visio", Enso gives me hints on available commands that match with letters entered. Two-three letters are usually enough.
There are a couple of files I use on regular basis. They are nicely put in the file system hierarchy, according to the projects, versions, dates... This makes it very hard to navigate to where they lie. Since I started using Enso I named them and can open them without even opening any directories. Works like magic 
Well, this post is not really about Enso. I think Enso is just a beginning. The natural language technologies will get more and more popular. Maybe eventually computers will just understand what we talk to them but it's not the point. The point is: the more we're dependent on software in our daily tasks, the more natural language they will need to understand. Natural language is the most effective means we have to communicate. It's not perfect though. It's like democracy: it has many drawbacks but we don't have anything better. We sometimes boost communication using pictures ("A picture is worth thousand words"), but still a conversation is best way to understand each other or to explain ideas.
And actually it is being done. Compare the results of googling "GM food" and "GM car". Google now "understand" the context of the search and "knows" what GM stands form.
We communicate with software so we need to use our most effective means.