There is another side to usability: available means of input and output.
My area of interest is medical informatics, especially computer aided diagnostics.
To be useful and medical computer system needs a method of input that does not impede the Doctor/paramedic/nurse in any way, YET captures all pertinent information.
Practically this means voice input on a palmtop. "pocket-linux" runs on at least two current palmtops that I know (Acompli and Ipaq). However I know of no freesoftware app that can do speach-to-text, nor any that can do hand-writting-to-text.
Both of these are very important modes of input for palmtops and 3rd Generation cellphones.
Text-to-speach is important for blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic people. Does anyone know of a Free app to do this? Imagine being able to write and xhtml page and use it either in a website, or a Gnome Atchung! presentation with text to speach by using different XSL style sheets.
I don't expect GUIs on mouse-keyboard-screen interfaces to change much. The real potential for improving usability lies with new types of I/O hardware, and the apps to exploit them. The "holy grail" (and a long way off) is natural language interpretation and generation. For the time being, precise terminologies may allow this to be faked up for specialist apps like medical informatics.
Nick Hockings.