Imagine a digital utopia where designers are free from grid-based design, and precision mouse control & clicks are replaced by gestural mechanisms. Where imagination is not exclusively for the mavericks to throw a curve ball at what’s achievable. Where we move away from the chair-and-desk paradigm and the frightening portrait WALL-E depicts of a human race whose only physical movement is to lift a straw to their lips. This is the new paradigm – a natural, active and social paradise where reality and virtual reality blend seamlessly with magical results.
Well, not quite. But there is plenty to savour from a paradigm that incorporates naturalness, encourages social interaction, and brings playfulness to the party. We are living in interesting times. Consider multi-touch, these devices offer a different way of interacting and manipulating content. This is not a subtle change but a revolution in the way we interface with digital content.
Many people are getting their first taste of natural user interfaces and there is an understandable buzz. The Web 2.0 movement harnessed collective intelligence built on a framework of creativity, collaboration, group thinking and sharing. This was a positive step forward for digital experiences. Web 2.0 made us feel good about ourselves for being more social while all the time we sat staring at a monitor, engaging in less and less face-to-face contact and developing a distorted view of social relationships. So how do we take another step closer to a digital utopia?
It was with several recent Microsoft Surface projects that I had a eureka moment and realised the possibilities of this new interaction paradigm. As the projects threw up questions, it was the subject of these that made me aware of the dramatic changes ahead: -
· Does the application work for single user, multi-friends and multi-stranger experiences?
· Do we have the correct balance of playfulness?
· Is it an exploratory experience?
· Does the application have a pulse?
· What is our social design strategy?
· and so on...
These were fascinating questions to be asking about any application, even more so an enterprise application.
Natural user interfaces have been around for several decades but we are finally seeing mainstream adoption. The rate at which multi-touch applications is forecasted to grow over the next 3 years means that what are currently a small percentage of designers working on multi-touch applications will increase rapidly as there will be an ever-growing appetite for multi-touch solutions. The iPhone has accelerated the interest in multi-touch, no longer niche, and with Windows 7 multi-touch will truly come of age. If you’re not working with multi-touch devices or NUI’s then does that matter? No! It's less about the technology driving our thinking but more about our thinking driving the experiences. The interaction revolution is as much about the evolution of the way we think about digital experiences. It’s exciting to ask these questions of the new breed of digital experiences. If somehow we can answer some of these questions then we’ll take a huge leap forward in creating compelling and enjoyable experiences.
Related reading - Playfulness in a Business Context