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According to Wikipedia, a Natural User Interface is when a UI is effectively invisible, or rather becomes invisible with successive learned interactions. These interactions are intended to feel natural as users operate the user interface design. Natural User Interface represent the third major paradigm in user interface design. The first user interface designs featured Command Line Interfaces which are codified and strictly text-based UIs typified by operating systems such as MS-DOS. Today Command Line Interfaces have mostly given way to Graphical User Interfaces but can still be accessed for scripting or other advanced purposes. Graphical User Interfaces use visual indicators as metaphors rather than text lines and are the way we interact with most modern operating systems today. Graphical User Interfaces allowed users to access computing without the steep learning curve of Command Line Interfaces as users could explore through trial and error. With Natural User Interfaces the learnability of a user interface design is further enhanced by using a UI in ways that feel natural. In the rest of this article I shall talk about the frontiers of Natural User Interface design.

Using Touch/ Gestures to Control a User Interface Design

The iPhone is perhaps the best proponent of using our sense of touch to control a user interface design. Unlike the indirect touch of a mouse using our own fingers in gestures was one of the standout features of the iPhone when it debuted. Pinch-to-zoom and swiping have now become such a common way to manipulate the user interface design of touchscreen devices that it is hard to imagine they didn't exist before the very first iPhone. Using touch to control user interface designs has even graduated from smartphones and tablets to desktop operating systems such as the latest OS X, which implements iOS gestures via a trackpad. The Microsoft Surface is effectively a table-sized tablet that follows the same paradigm.

Using Audio to Control a User Interface Design

Using audio as a way of controlling a user interface design is nothing new. For example, the aforementioned iPhone has a voice control option for accessibility purposes. The Dragon speech recognition software package is perhaps the vanguard of using audio to control user interface designs by allowing users to transcribe speech into text, search or input commands into a user interface design. With the use of audio Dragon software features minimalistic user interface designs as less actual text is needed to express the range of options available to users. The main challenge with audio as a frontier in Natural User Interface design is not the recording of the audio but in making sense of the audio so that users can speak as if they were talking to another person. This is still a very big challenge for NUIs.

As the computing landscape evolves to include an ever more sophisticated range of products and form factors the usability of the software and websites we use is continually being reviewed and refined. A crucial component of user interface design is usability. Simply put, a user interface design with poor usability is going to frustrate users and drive them to seek alternatives as quickly as possible. Another important factor tied to usability is learnability. After all, there is always a learning curve associated with every new user interface design we come across with varying degrees of steepness.

For the longest time building a user interface design meant optimizing usability for one particular dimension, if I may call it that. This dimension, of course, is the venerable desktop. Nowadays there are smartphones and tablets to contend to, all of which need a unique user interface design by virtue of touchscreens and other natural user interfaces as the favored mode of input rather than, say, the mouse. This stratification of user interface designs across devices means that not every UI design element can be instantly usable. At some point users are going to have to learn how to use it. Learnability in this case means making decisions on which features to bury in advanced settings and which ones should be on the default user interface design (this is what users see when they use a website or app for the first time). There are a couple of things to consider when optimizing a website or software application's user interface design for learnability:-

• Importance – How critical is your website or software application to a user? Users are far more likely to spend time learning a user interface design if it is crucial to their workflow, for example. One has to look no further than, say, Photoshop or Final Cut Pro. Both are complicated software applications yet everyday users spend time learning how to get the most out of the complex user interface design to fulfill their aims.
• Frequency – We humans are creatures of habit. Despite the countless number of websites and software applications out there we tend to have a core nucleus of favorites that we revisit again and again. The more we use a user interface design the more quickly we learn to use it, with each repeat visit making us use it all the more efficiently.
• Cost – The more someone pays for an application the more time they are going to invest in learning how to use it. This could have something to do with the Value Attribution theory whereby we assume something expensive is worth our investment and the resultant heightened expectations help us persevere with a user interface design longer. This, however, is no justification for charging exorbitant prices!
• Alternatives – The number, and quality, of alternative tools available to users also determines how long they spend learning a user interface design. The more unique or the higher quality inherent in your website or application the more likely users will stick by you. However, be sure to fix all usability issues before a better alternative crops up to tempt your users away.
• Simplicity – For the sake of learnability it is important to keep the default user interface design as simple as possible. Jamming every possible feature in the default user interface design only serves to make it appear to require more time to get to know. This can put off potential users who may seek a simpler solution elsewhere.

For many beginners, the task of picking fonts is a mystifying process. There seem to be endless choices — from normal, conventional-looking fonts to novelty candy cane fonts and bunny fonts — with no way of understanding the options, only never-ending lists of categories and recommendations. Selecting the right typeface is a mixture of firm rules and loose intuition, and takes years of experience to develop a feeling for. Here are five guidelines for picking and using fonts that I’ve developed in the course of using and teaching typography.

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1. Dress For The Occasion

Many of my beginning students go about picking a font as though they were searching for new music to listen to: they assess the personality of each face and look for something unique and distinctive that expresses their particular aesthetic taste, perspective and personal history. This approach is problematic, because it places too much importance on individuality.

The most appropriate analogy for picking type. (Photo credit: Samuuraijohnny. Used under Creative Commons license.)

Choosing a typeface can be tricky. The beauty and complexity of type, combined with an inexhaustible supply of options to evaluate, can make your head spin. But don’t be baffled — and don’t despair. While there are no easy-to-follow rules on how best to choose a typeface, there are many tried-and-true principles you can quickly learn and apply to make an appropriate typeface choice. If you work systematically through the options below, you’ll have a winning typeface choice in no time. Let’s get started.

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What Is Your Goal?

The first thing you have to do in order to choose a typeface is form a strong impression in your mind about how you want your audience to react to the text. This is your goal, and it will guide the process. You might provide this impression, or it might be dictated to you by your client, or it may be determined by your audience. Whatever the case, your choice of typeface needs to strike a good combination of both legibility and readability, while remaining appropriate for the audience and the message. Each of these characteristics requires some degree of independent consideration. As you may already know from experience, it’s easy to go about this the wrong way and get overwhelmed. This problem can be compounded as a design evolves.

Perhaps the hardest part of breaking down the typeface selection process is understanding which parts are more subjective and which parts are more objective. After reading and digesting your client’s text, it is easier to start with the objective aspects of typeface selection because they — by default — make subjective decisions for us. There are no fixed positions on the spectrum from subjective to objective. However, we know that legibility is more easily quantifiable than a mood. Let’s start with the two most objective attributes — legibility and readability.

Legibility

It may seem at first glance that legibility and readability are the same thing, but they are not. Legibility refers to the design of the typeface, as in the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs, the presence of novel type design elements etc. It is easy to tell one letterform from another in a legible typeface. For instance, decorative typefaces have low legibility because they are primarily meant to be seen at a glance, rather than read at length. Conversely, typefaces designed for novels or newspapers have very high legibility. You need to design a specific, overall legibility based on the function of the text.

Consider this example where the left block of text is set in Tobin Tax, a decorative serif typeface. Compare it to the same text set in Sabon, a classic and highly-legible serif typeface. Where does your typeface choice fall between these two extremes?

Not so long ago, we visited a site that we would not like to mention here for apparent reasons. The fact is, it was simply bowled over by all the graphics and we decided to examine it further. However after approximately 10 mins of going through the site, we were about to pull our hair out. The interface was so bad that we couldn't find our way thru it. There's no point in getting a great looking site if visitors cannot use it the way they should.
Considering that we have been working with the internet since 1999 and have seen lots of sites, we ranked it as one of the best when it comes to graphics but among the worst when it comes to user interface design. Also, now that we're working with Web 2.0, interface design becomes all the more important.
So how can you make your existing user interface more exciting? Or how can you use the very best interface approaches?
Let's now discuss about the ease of use. Irrespective of how appealing the visuals on your site may be, the user will just close it if it's too troublesome to use. A nicely designed web site with a high quality user interface just flows when it comes to content and links. Nothing seems out of place or even forced into view. You might have the very best features but we actually place ease of use over almost everything else. Why is Google one of the top search engines today? Because it places simplicity of use over almost everything else. It is simple actually.

The user interface (UI) indicates to the graphical, textual and auditory information that is presented to the users. There are different types of UI:
1. Graphical User Interface- A graphical user interface usually focuses on the graphical images and widgets along with the text to communicate with the users.
2. Touchscreens- It is a display that accepts the input only when you touch the screen with your figure tip. These have come into light due to high use of technologies and demand of mobile phones.
3. Intelligent user interfaces- In this case human and machine interact and both try to improve the efficiency, effectiveness.
But among all the types the graphical user interface is considered to be the best assistant for performing a task.

Some suggestions regarding user interface:
1. There should be consistency with the color and the tabs and make the tab easy to operate.
2. Make your information simple and improve your site structure by using effective grouping tabs and labels, and make the messages visible at the right time.
3. Take care of your graphics and language and make sure that they are appropriate for your target audience as this will communicate your brand effectively.
The concept of UI is evolving and it is providing more information and perfect designs to the users. You can also customize the information according to their needs that is being displayed. Usability and manageability is the two important key of user interface.