For many years the gesture interface from Minority Report was considered to be the holy grail of UI design, doing away with the mouse. In many ways we got it via the Microsoft Kinect and whilst innovative, it wasn’t very comfortable to use.

Its biggest contribution was offering a voice UX (“Xbox, Pause”) which has since become the standard for interacting with smart devices, modelled after the computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Science Fiction UI design has taken a turn towards the Holographic, to some success. Most of these interfaces are designed for film-making techniques first, allowing the viewer to see the face of an actor as the camera pans around them. The types of interface offered in Star Trek: Discovery are guilty of this as in reality they would be quite useless.

Rather than bespoke UI though I believe that one device will one day facilitate the interaction between humans and devices. The ‘Focus’ device created by the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn on the PlayStation 4 offers a glimpse of how this might work, with external devices providing feedback to the user via a single point of interface. As a video game UI it is inspired but it also illustrates how the future of the metaverse is not in creating a VR time sink but adding value to IRL spaces.