Top Articles to Read This Week: How Perceptual User Interfaces Maximize Engagement Across Platforms

From visual search to gesture and voice control to biometrics, the way we interact with computers is rapidly changing. The new types of user interfaces are moving away from humans doing all the work and more towards having the computers meet us halfway. Perceptual user interfaces, which try to make the human-computer interaction as natural as human-human interactions are slowly emerging to make this a reality.

Here are the top articles to read this week:1. Heres How Amazons Alexa Hooks YouBy Nir Eyal from Inc.Voice is the current perceptual user interface taking over the world, and there is clear potential for it to change our daily lives.

This is what Amazon (and others, but being the only retailer, Amazon more so) is betting on that consumers will use Alexa so often to solve their problems, it will become a habit to keep asking Alexa for everything and stay on the Amazon platform, which, by design, will increase transactions and sales.2. This is Vivos under-the-screen fingerprint scannerBy Stan Schroeder from MashableFingerprint scanning may not seem like much, but an integrated fingerprint scanner within a screen is a pretty big deal.

Chinese company Vivo has created a scanner that works through glass and metal, which gives us an idea of the future of human-computer interactions. This will make the scanner pretty much invisible, which is the best interface, because it does not create any distractions from the experience.3.

Apple Buys German Eye-Tracking Tech Firm With AR, VR ApplicationsBy Todd Spangler from VarietyEye tracking is an up-and-coming type of user interface that can be used for a myriad of functions. Its true that eye tracking can be extremely useful for AR and VR, which is what Apple recently announced it will be focusing on. However, with all their hardware, Apple would be able to leverage eye tracking beyond gaming.

Just wait until you can wake Siri by giving a quizzical look to your iPhone.4. Heres why Valves Knuckles VR controller is such an exciting propositionBy Adam Rosenberg from MashableGesture control is an interface that always seems to be not quite there.

Wands are great at controlling hand and arm movements, but sometimes thats not sensitive enough. However, Valve has announced that it is working to fix that problem with their Knuckles controller. Essentially, each finger is treated like its own joystick, which means we can all be like Tom Cruise in Minority Report sooner than 2054.

5. What to know about visual searchBy Ilyse Liffreing from DigidayAs humans, we process images much, much faster than we do text, yet we still mostly interface with computers and platforms through text. Brands have only recently begun implementing visual recognition technology into their ecommerce platforms, but the market is set to grow by 216% by 2019.

This means were well on our way towards more intuitive technology and interactions. Curated by Hadley Stork. RELATED QUESTION Why don't hotel rooms have ceiling lights?

My hotel building is over 100 years old, so we have ceiling lights. We also need a ladder to change a bulb 11' from the floor. It can take 20 minutes for 1 bulb!

This is one reason that we have changed to the longer lasting (and more economical) low-energy bulbs. I would be delighted to have wall lights instead. Retro-fitting them would however be even less economically sound.

Higher than average ceilings mean ladders to change the bulbs in ceiling fittings, and this extends the maintenance time and convenience for staff enormously. Even normal height ceilings mean that a chair is needed to swap a bulb out. Wall fittings are so much more convenient for both staff and customers, reducing the time taken to get light again!

As Michael Forrest Jones says - anything other than a simple bulb swap requires the power to be cut to the whole circuit (which may be more than just a few rooms). This makes it very awkward to do emergency repairs after dark! -- Been there done that.

Go with wall fittings that can be isolated in-room! In short: I have ceiling lights. I don't like them, as they are awkward for maintenance.

Replacing them would be expensive and extremely difficult - basically a total rewire of the hotel lighting system. Design engineers are not stupid. they note the first 2 points!