An updated version of the presentation we did at the Euro IA summit, presented at the Polish IA summit in April 2011. For more information on Fjord, visit www.fjordnet.com or follow us on twitter @fjord
1. Design beyond the
glowing rectangle.
What does the internet of things mean for UX designers?
Claire Rowland & Chris Browne
April 2011
Sunday, 10 April 2011
2. Cześć :)
Claire Rowland Chris Browne
Head of Research Technical Design Lead
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Cheshcht :)
Hello, we are ... from Fjord in London. Thanks for having us!
5. “Today’s multimedia machine
makes the computer screen into
a demanding focus of attention
rather than allowing it to fade
into the background.”
Mark Weiser
Sunday, 10 April 2011
In 1991, Mark Weiser (the ‘father of ubiquitous computing’) said...
6. “I hope we don’t end
up in a world filled
solely with
slick,
glowing
rectangles”
Timo Arnall
image - The Onion
Sunday, 10 April 2011
...20 years later, we’ve not really solved this, have we?
Our day to day lives involve many interactions with objects, but most of our interactions with computing still happen through the
abstracted world of what Timo Arnall calls ‘slick, glowing rectangles’.
7. UX is
moving
beyond the
screen.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
However, we’re starting to see digital dissolve more into the physical world.
Of course, people like Weiser have been talking about this for a long time now.
But things are now starting to happen in the mainstream, here and now, which pose new challenges for UX.
We think that in the next couple of years, UX designers are going to have the opportunity to design things that involve not just
screens, but services and physical objects for the world around them.
17. What does
this mean for
design?
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Over the next couple of years, this stuff is due to hit the mainstream and will affect the work UX designers do on an increasing basis
Here’s what we think this might mean for design...
21. Key design
challenges.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Here are a few of the key challenges we think UX designers will have to be prepared for, and some suggested ways to do things
differently.
We’re just working this stuff out ourselves... these are some of the issues we hope to be able to research over the next couple of years.
These touch on bigger issues - they’re important for this but each is a huge topic in its own right
22. 1.
Device - service
relationship gets
more complex.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Classic usability tends to focus on one user using one device and one service to do one task at a time.
That’s increasingly not what’s actually going on. Our relationship with devices and services is getting more complicated.
It’s really important to think not just about device, but service design: how your user experience works across multiple devices. The
device is no longer the unit of experience... the service is.
As embedded components come online, digital services will have to cope with increasing complexity in several ways...
30. 3.
New platforms for
services.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
31. Data overload
Sunday, 10 April 2011
More and more data is being produced in both the physical and digital space, and can be shared in near real time.
How do we as designers leverage this huge amount of increasing complex data to help enrich the services we design, and aid us in
designing new forms of services?
37. 4.
Ensuring users
retain control of
their data.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
38. “There’s a fine line between
pervasive computing and
invasive computing.”
Victor Rozek
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Privacy management is much more than a bunch of tick boxes and security settings. It incorporates less tangible elements such as
'appropriate use' and a user’s ‘comfort level’ etc.
Many people already find managing privacy too difficult on Facebook and share things with people they didn’t mean to share them
with. It’s going to get a lot more complicated.
42. 5.
Interactions
become tangible.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
43. Thinking is physical
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Cognitive scientists now talk about ‘embodied cognition’*: the idea that the way we think is shaped by, and inseparable from, our
physical experiences of interacting with the world. (Dourish, McCullough)
For example, the idea that up is good and down is bad is rooted in your physical experience of living with gravity. “I’m feeling down
today” is bad. Up (and fast) is good... “I’m feeling upbeat”. We say someone is ‘boiling over with rage‘ or ‘steam is coming out of their
ears’: understanding anger through containment of liquids. These are English language examples, but the principles seem to be
universal.
Cognitive scientists would argue that this perception of up and down is a very fundamental basic level category or building block of
thought used to make sense of other, more abstract things.
Embodied interaction seeks to make physical designs make sense to us through harnessing the way we understand the world through
physical experience. At the moment, much tangible interaction work is happening in R&D labs...
49. 7.
Digital business
models hit the real
world.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
As the boundaries between the physical and digital world blur, we’ll see digital business models starting to appear in the physical
world.
Some of these may be more or less acceptable to users...
53. 8.
User research
methods.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
There are two big challenges here...
Understanding needs for things people are not yet familiar with
Prototyping and testing complex systems
58. How can UX
people get
started?
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Everything we’ve talked about is happening now, somewhere.
We think this is about to affect the work that many of us do, even if just in small ways.
We’d like to suggest a few ways in which UX designers can start to think about this.
64. Thank you.
@fjord
chris.browne@fjord.co.uk
claire.rowland@fjord.co.uk / @clurr
Thanks also to Alex von Feldmann, Dom Quigley, Ann Light, Alfred Lui,
Ji-Hye Park, Sam Crosland, Martin Charlier, Helen Le Voi
PS: we’re hiring in London
Sunday, 10 April 2011