Here’s the presentation I gave in Sydney at Web Directions a week or so ago (great conference!).
Link: Context, Sensing and Mobiles (slideshare.net)
Posts Tagged: future
20
Sep 08
Google on the future of mobile
Google’s Andy Rubin thinks this of the future of mobile:
- Smart alerts: Your phone will be smart about your situation and alert you when something needs your attention.
- Augmented reality: Your phone uses its arsenal of sensors to understand your situation and provide you information that might be useful.
- Crowd sourcing goes mainstream: Your phone is your omnipresent microphone to the world, a way to publish pictures, emails, texts, Twitters, and blog entries.
- Sensors everywhere: Your phone knows a lot about the world around you.
- Tool for development: Your phone may be more than just a convenience, it may be your livelihood.
- The future-proof device: Your phone will open up, as the Internet already has, so it will be easy for developers to create or improve applications and content.
- Safer software through trust and verification: Your phone will provide tools and information to empower you to decide what to download, what to see, and what to share.
Link: The future of mobile (googleblog.blogspot.com)
10
Sep 08
The future of search
It’s not specifically about mobile, but when Marissa Meyer of Google writes about the future of search it’s worth paying attention.
“So what’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know. That search engine could tailor answers to you based on your preferences, your existing knowledge and the best available information; it could ask for clarification and present the answers in whatever setting or media worked best. That ideal search engine could have easily and elegantly quenched my withdrawal and fueled my addiction on Saturday. I’m very proud that Google in its first 10 years has changed expectations around information and how quickly and easily it should be able to be retrieved. But I’m even more excited about what Google search can achieve in the future.”
Link: The future of search (googleblog.blogspot.com)
25
Aug 08
Aurora Concept and the Mobile Web
The Aurora browser concept piece from the folks at Adaptive Path has lots to like about it. But overall I struggle with the idea of the web browser as a universal tool for doing things on devices, especially mobile devices. The web browser is great in that it’s a networked standard way of easily accessing information and services (in the same way Gopher) was so popular before it). It’s easy to get scale, because everybody has the same client and rendering engine on their PC.
But if there’s one thing that’s demanded by mobile devices, it’s that the things you create are highly optimised for the context of use. And this is exactly what a web browser is not. So it’s no surprise to me that people are racing to use the native iPhone applications for Facebook or Twitter rather than going to the iPhone-specific web versions.
Link: Aurora Concept Video (adaptivepath.com)
22
Aug 08
Ten Future UI Concepts
Smashing Magazine describes some future UI concepts, including several for mobile devices.
“Below we present 10 recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but some of them are already reality. And in fact, they are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they can become ubiquitous in the next years.”
Link: 10 Futuristic User Interfaces (smashingmagazine.com)
19
Aug 08
Context Aware vs Location Based
“I must say that it’s been surprisingly difficult, in various conversations with folks not immersed in the IxD space, to get across the essential distinction between context-aware applications and location-based services (LBS)...Mac Funamizu has actually nailed two separate things here. The first demonstrates precisely what I, at least, mean when I use the words “context aware”: but for some residual core of basic functionality, the device’s capabilities and available interface modalities at any given moment are largely if not entirely determined by the other networked objects around it. If you pair the device with a text, it’s a reader; at the checkstand, it provides a friendly POS interface; aimed at the skyline, it augments reality.”
Link: Worth a thousand words, etc. (speedbird.wordpress.com)
17
Jun 08
Sensing and the future of cities
Adam Greenfield analyses the impact of services like Citysense, a location-based service with a twist. I’m not entirely sure I agree with the thrust of his argument, though; the future of urbanism is surely about meaningful technology more than information.
“For example, one of the first things that drops out of the Citysense data is a statistically strongly significant degree of correlation between certain populations and specified locations in the city – in effect, the existence of self-selected “tribes” defined entirely by their behavior in space and time (Skibiski’s word, and one whose resonances I’m not entirely happy with). When you have access to additional information characterizing these locations – you know: is this a sportsbar or a leather bar? a Muni Metro stop or a parking lot? the Zeitgeist or the Top of the Mark? the drunk tank or the emergency room? – well, then, it seems to me that you have the beginnings of a concordance to the city. You can begin to make proactive decisions about how to make best use of the urban manifold.
“Nevertheless, it is transparently self-evident to me that this is the way we’re going to do cities from here on out…I’m seeing a big LED signboard tacked across the front of Zeitgeist’s doorway: “Garden now at 23% above threshold. Get your Tamale Lady orders in now!” And if that isn’t the future of cities, then I don’t know what is.”
Link: I have seen the future of urban life (speedbird.wordpress.com)
3
May 08
Three
In the last three years everything and nothing has changed.
User experience design for the mobile life was a murmur in 2005. It was barely audible in the world of business magazines and almost untalked about in all but the most obscure design circles. Today it’s hard not to overhear the growing cacophony, in conferences, magazines, the news and elsewhere.
But beyond conversation, not that much has actually changed. The devices we carry in our hands are still using increasingly overburdened interaction paradigms, and only slowly are truly new services and capabilities being used in the wild.
This blog turned three today. It’s amazing to me how much louder the conversation has become; over the next three years I’m looking forward to turning more of those conversations into reality.
15
Apr 08
Bruce Sterling talks about ubicomp
Video from the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign conference in Germany.
Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.
Link: Bruce Sterling (vimeo.com, via)
13
Apr 08
Economist special report on mobility
This week’s Economist has a special report on mobility. Here are links to some of the articles in the report (which seem to be available for free now), more are after the link.
Nomads at last. “Wireless communication is changing the way people work, live, love and relate to places—and each other, says Andreas Kluth”
Labour movement. “The joys and drawbacks of being able to work from anywhere”
The new oases. “Nomadism changes buildings, cities and traffic”
Family ties. “Kith and kin get closer, with consequences for strangers”
A world of witnesses. “When everybody becomes a nomadic monitor”
Homo mobilis. “As language goes, so does thought”
Link: Economist: A special report on mobility (economist.com)
5
Apr 08
Computing experiences in 2020
Microsoft Research is offering up a vision for computing in 2020. The very detailed document is thought provoking stuff, and even better it offers up some very specific questions about design challenges that fall out of that vision.
“Many new forms of mobile interaction are on the horizon. Mobile devices will allow us to connect with others in new ways, as well as to access information in the environment. For example, we will increasingly be able to use mobile devices to interact with objects in the real world, acting more as if they are extensions of our own hands, by pointing and gesturing with them. While travelling, we can gesture with our mobile device at a historic building and be offered up an audio or visual history of its architecture. Taking a picture of a product in the supermarket can send us back information about where the product came from, its associated air miles, and ecological credentials. Likewise, buying a piece of music by pointing at a band’s poster and then sending it as a gift to a friend’s music player can be as natural as a ‘cut and paste’ operation on a desktop computer. As we move toward 2020, mobile devices will increasingly offer flexibility in interaction and new kinds of connections to both our local and remote world.”
Link: Being Human: human computer interaction in 2020 (research.microsoft.com, thanks Stefan)
