I observed yesterday (on our High Tech blog) that $1 accelerometers, soon to be built into any number of portable data/communication devices, are indicators of the drive toward greater diversity of interaction — and better judgment, if I may call it that, about how our devices choose to interrupt us with things that they believe we’d like to know.

Analyst Denis Pombriant has offered another perspective today on the use of voice interaction, a useful thing in a time when we spend so much of our workday on the road. Ribbit’s integration with salesforce.com actually goes beyond what people do away from their desks to integrate digital recordings of verbal requests, for example, to improve accountability and offer convenient access to transcription services following important conversations or meetings.

I’m not an unbridled fan of voice interaction, but then again I’ve spent most of my paid-for time for the past 20+ years at a keyboard. There are plenty of people who are much more productive in other modes, or who don’t have the luxury of hours at a desk almost every day.

There’s also the simple question of managing information for maximum value to a generation of workers that’s inclined to multi-task: one of our in-house mobile development leaders once said to me that "The mobile user does not have time, patience, or
focus," and perhaps the word "mobile" in that comment could be replaced by "modern" with equal accuracy.

One way or another, we’ll do well to get away from screen-and-keyboard assumptions in the design and deployment of tomorrow’s applications.