Many vision-based human-computer interaction systems are based on the tracking of user actions. Examples include gaze tracking, head tracking, finger tracking, etc. In this paper, we present a framework that employs no user tracking; instead, all interface components continuously observe and react to changes within a local neighborhood. More specifically, components expect a predefined sequence of visual events called visual interface cues (VICs). VICs include color, texture, motion, and geometric elements, arranged to maximize the veridicality of the resulting interface element. A component is executed when this stream of cues has been satisfied. We present a general architecture for an interface system operating under the VIC-based HCI paradigm and then focus specifically on an appearance-based system in which a hidden Markov model (HMM) is employed to learn the gesture dynamics. Our implementation of the system successfully recognizes a button push with a 96% success rate.