  Multiple access techniques are fundamental to the design of wireless
communication systems, since many crucial components of such systems depend on
the choice of the multiple access technique. Because of the importance of
multiple access, there has been an ongoing quest during the past decade to
develop next generation multiple access (NGMA). Among those potential
candidates for NGMA, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has received
significant attention from both the industrial and academic research
communities, and has been highlighted in the recently published International
Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2030 Framework. However, there is still no
consensus in the research community about how exactly NOMA assisted NGMA should
be designed. This perspective is to outline three important features of NOMA
assisted NGMA, namely multi-domain utilization, multi-mode compatibility, and
multi-dimensional optimality, where important directions for future research
into the design of NOMA assisted NGMA are also discussed.
