The field of cognitive science and now "cognitive engineering" is now - justifiably - taking credit for the progress in user computer interface (UCI) technology.  These fields were the (only) ones asking why the user-computer interaction process could not be modeled after some validated cognitive information processing processes. It’s no accident that much UCI progress can be traced to findings in behavioral psychology and cognitive science; it’s amazing that the cross-fertilization took so long.

UCI progress has had a profound impact upon the design, development and use of all interactive computer-based applications. Because many of the newer tools and techniques are now affordable (because computing costs have dramatically declined generally), it’s now possible to satisfy complex UCI requirements even on personal computer-based applications. Early data-oriented applications displayed rows and rows (and columns and columns) of numbers to users; however, modern systems now project graphic relationships among data in 3D and virtual reality-based high resolution color.

It’s possible to animate and simulate in real-time, while being cost-effective. Many of these capabilities were just too expensive five years ago and way too computationally intensive for the hardware architectures of the 1990s. There’s no question that rich multimedia technology will affect the way future applications are designed and used. The ability to see and hear data, information, and knowledge, as well as the ability to see and hear descriptions of that content from friends, colleagues and service representatives “in person” over the Web, will dramatically change the way we think about information sharing, collaboration and problem-solving. The gap between the way humans "see" and structure problems will narrow considerably through the application of rich multimedia technology and the collaborative communications applications that exploit these new capabilities.

The use of rich multimedia graphical displays of all kinds will dominate future UCI applications. Growing evidence in visual cognition research suggests how powerful the visual mind is. Complicated concepts are often easily communicated graphically, and it is possible to convert complex problems from alphanumeric to graphic form. There is no question that applications will exploit hypermedia, rich multimedia, and interactive graphics of all kinds. Speech input and output will also emerge over the next few years as a viable UCI technology. While predictions about the arrival of "voice activated text processors" have been optimistic, progress toward continuous speech input and output has only been steady. There are hundreds of applications that will benefit from keyboard/mouse/touchpad-less interaction. Speech technology will be especially applicable to wireless devices.

The applications we incubate here exploit emerging computational and display technologies, intelligent systems technology and a host of other technologies that together can change the way we interact with all varieties of digital devices.