Method and apparatus for operating a user interface

A method for operating a user interface, comprising:

• detecting a first user input;
• performing a confidence analysis, during which the first user input is compared with a plurality of stored database entries and each compared database entry is assigned a value of a confidence measure, which assesses a correspondence between the first user input and a database entry;
• and
• generating different kinds of system responses, which differ from one another in at least one feature, depending on a result of the confidence analysis, the system responses comprising:
• a first kind of system response comprising, as a distinguishing first feature, a system output which requests a second user input;
• a second kind of system response comprising, as a distinguishing second feature, an automatic selection of the database entry;
• and
• a third kind of system response comprising the distinguishing first feature and the distinguishing second feature,
• wherein the third kind of system response automatically changes into the first kind of system response or the second kind of system response after a period of time has elapsed,
• wherein with a sufficiently unambiguous result of the confidence analysis, a function on the basis of a selected database entry of the first input is immediately activated, whereas with a less unambiguous result of the confidence analysis, the function on the basis of the selected database entry of the first input is activated after a further period of time has elapsed, and
• wherein the result of the confidence analysis is based on categorized values of a matrix table associated with two threshold values.