The current trend in the production of information appliances is the human-centred, customer-centred approach, where technology serves human needs invisibly, unobtrusively. The emphasis shifts from the application programs to the users, their tasks and their workplaces, making computation often move off the desktop to become embedded in the world around us. In this scenario the role of the visual interface becomes crucial since, as far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product. In this paper we briefly survey the most recent results in the field of advanced visual interfaces, with focus on users' needs and ways to serve them.