Designing Our Future: Technologies and Behaviors that Impact Design

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Designing Our Future:Technologies and Behaviors that Impact Design

Made with love by | July 2013

As our world becomes increasingly digital, experience design is

more important than ever.

And, as experience design gains importance, the discipline and its

tools are evolving. The very definition has broadened: rather than

considering point-and-click interfaces, experience design is about

the way that we engage with technology, the world, and

ourselves. As such, it’s no longer the domain of a single expert (a

UX designer, IA, or IxD); it’s a view of the broader world that

every role must consider.

At Little Arrows, we’re passionate about identifying places where

real behavior and technology intersect, and designing solutions to

take advantage of these opportunities. These technological

trends will transform the way we design in the future.

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Forward

“ Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

- Steve Jobs

Little Arrows at work

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Surfacing Data

Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere

Friction-Free Commerce

Everything is an Interface

Better, Faster, Stronger

Physical / Digital

Trends in Experience Design

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Everything is an Interface

Beyond the Mouse

We’ve already started to move from GUIs (graphic user

interfaces) to NUIs (natural user interfaces) with the

advent of touch and gesture based technology. But

what happens when our brains, our eyes, and our

everyday interactions become the interface?

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“A natural user interface (NUI) is a system for human-computer interaction that the user operates through intuitive actions related to natural, everyday human behavior. 

- techtarget.com

Everything is an Interface

Goodbye, Buttons!

The iPhone led the move to touch-screen interface,

allowing us to have more naturalistic interactions with

our technologies. This has lead to a major new trend in

UI design that takes full advantage of simple, easy to use

gestures that replace simple button clicking.

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Rise is an alarm clock without buttons Clear is a to do list without buttons

Mailbox’s interface is driven by swipes, not clicks

Everything is an Interface

Real-World Gestures for Games & Entertainment

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Xbox One with built-in Kinect controller

Leap Motion controller for PCs

PS4 Playroom (Eye Camera)

Everything is an Interface

Extending with Voice & Gesture

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WiSee recognizes gestures via a WiFi network, allowing users to control electronic devices from any room

Honda and other automakers are including gesture recognition in their latest cars

Myo is a bracelet which tracks arm movements and transmits them to digital devices - from computers to drones

Everything is an Interface

Ambient Intelligence

The IceDot Crash Sensor helmet notifies emergency contacts when its wearer crashes.

By creating user profiles based on interaction patterns, BioCatch can identify intruders.

Many applications now support geo-fencing, which triggers events based on the user’s location. Geoloqi allows users to set up alerts when they are near locations with specific attributes (like a venue with a pinball machine).

Until recent years, most technology interactions had to be

triggered actively - the user has to request for something to

happen. Now, smart technology can respond intelligently to

ambient, real-world triggers, allowing technology to react to

passive actions like location and velocity.

Everything is an Interface

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Friction-Free Commerce

Easy Come, Easy Go

The introduction of mobile payment technologies and

apps has the potential to completely change the way we

shop. Experiences created by this new era of mobile

payment will transform how we as consumers interact

with stores and the products inside them.

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“Profit is what happens when you do everything else right.

-Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia Founder

Homeplus Subway Virtual StoreFriction-Free Commerce

Immediacy and the Era of Buy-It-Now

It’s no longer necessary to take out your wallet to make

a purchase. By removing payment obstacles, mobile

payment technology makes commerce even more

streamlined - and empower every craftsman and artist

to create their own store.

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Friction-Free Commerce

LevelUp rewards users who pay by linking credit cards to their phone

With $15B in payment volume and 3x Y/Y growth2, Square makes it increasing easy for

vendors to accept credit/debit payments

NFC services, like Google Wallet and Isis, account for 2% of total

mobile-payment transactions1

1 Marguerite Reardon. “NFC mobile payments disappoint while money transfers boom”. CNET. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57587589-94/nfc-

mobile-payments-disappoint-while-money-transfers-boom/ 2 Mary Meeker, Liang Wu, KPCB, “Internet Trends D11 Conference”, slide 97.

New Ways to Pay

Beyond new methods of physical payments, technology

is also creating new models of purchase and funding.

Crowdfunding, micropayments, and social currency

have the potential to displace cash as king.

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Friction-Free Commerce

Flattr enables social micro-payments. Enjoyed a tweet? Tip $1.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter (which has raised $600MM so far1) and IndieGoGo

make it easy to fund a dream project. Klout offers real-life perks to

users with social influence.

1 Kickstarter Stats: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

Loyalty 2.0

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Apple’s Passbook makes it easy for customers to save multiple loyalty cards

Foursquare and Shopkick offer targeted rewards to people who check in frequently

Belly allows retailers to create a virtual version of the old-school punch card loyalty program.

Friction-Free Commerce

Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere

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The World Through Screens

Mobile-first design is causing us to rethink the way we create

websites and real-world products. The average smartphone user

checks her phone over 100 times per day1 for everything from

content creation (we now share over 500 million photos per day)2,

communication, health research, and banking3. Mobile devices have

become our first digital touch point, and, in doing so, they are

changing the way that we engage with the world.

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1 Mary Meeker, Liang Wu, KPCB, “Internet Trends D11 Conference”, slide 52. 2 Mary Meeker, Liang Wu, KPCB, “Internet

Trends D11 Conference”, slide 14. 3 Pew Internet Research, “Cell Phone Activities 2012”.

“The mobile revolution is not happening; it’s happened.

- Mel Silva, Google

Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere

Context-Sensitive Design

Because our mobile devices are nearly always with us,

they have the opportunity to react based to our

context - location, time of day, and other custom

events. When done properly, users won’t even notice

that the design is adapting.

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Foursquare prompts users to check-in when they’re nearby

places they’ve visited before

MessageMe allows users to share their context with their friends: the current song

that’s playing, location, and more.

Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere

When there is a URL copied to the clipboard, Pocket

makes it easy to add the link.

Simple and Streamlined

Effective mobile interfaces are uncluttered, simple, and

streamlined to the task at hand. With mobile web traffic

growing 1.5x per year1, responsive design is a

requirement for all interfaces, and mobile’s simplicity

has begun to migrate to the web.

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Facebook’s website has begun to borrow overloaded elements from

its mobile navigation

Applications like Flipboard first verify their viability in mobile, and then extend their

interface metaphors across devices.

Quartz is a newspaper that interacts similarly

across all devices

1 Mary Meeker, Liang Wu, KPCB, “Internet Trends D11 Conference”, slide 32.

Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere

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PadRacer uses iPhones for controllers and iPads for custom race tracks

Xbox Smartglass offers enhanced content on mobile devices, synchronized

with what’s being watched.

Adobe Nav turns tablets and mobile devices into a secondary input device for Adobe Photoshop.

The Remote Control for Our LivesMobile First, Mobile Everywhere

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Physical / Digital

The Internet of Everything

The digital world is leaking into the physical - through

internet-enabled technology and new ways to create

real-world objects. Experience design needs to evolve

to make it easy for users to bridge these two worlds.

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“Computers will clearly handle the things we aren’t good at, and we will handle the things computers clearly aren’t good at... The Internet of things will augment your brain.

- Eric Schmidt, Google

Physical/Digital

Hardware Gets Smarter

Lifx is a smart lightbulb that can be programmed and controlled remotely

Nest is a digital thermostat that helps conserve energy while

maintaining a perfect temperature

Tile is a small object that can be affixed to any device, so you can always find its location.

Physical/Digital

Build It Yourself

Twine makes it easy to create custom actions based on real-world events.

The Makerbot and other 3D printers allow consumers to create

physical devices in their homes

Quirky is a service that allows anyone to invent a new product and bring it to market

Physical/Digital

Manipulate the Real World

Lockitron allows users to unlock their home with a remote app.

Uniqlo’s Magic Mirror allows customers to change the color

of the clothing they’re trying on

Points, from Breakfast NY, is a digital sign that points users to custom destinations.

Physical/Digital

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Surfacing Data

Introduction

As a society now built on a vast infrastructure of data

driven technologies, we are accumulating more data in

one day than we did in a whole year two decades ago.

Because of this, we need to learn how to use this data

to design more enriched and intelligent experiences.

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“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight

-Carly Fiorina

Surfacing Data

Visualization of tweets in NYC

MSNBC’s Spectra provides a visual, color coded approach to everyday news.

Google Trends provides realtime search data in a beautiful, interactive way.

iOS7’s Photos app automatically organizes and displays photo collections in a scalable way

New Ways to VisualizeSurfacing Data

Highlight and Contextualize

All data is not created equally, and for years we’ve had to deal

with interfaces that displayed all data in the same way. Great

design highlights the data that is most important first and

explains it with visualizations that show it in context.

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Surfacing Data

Simple’s Safe to Spend metric makes it easy to understand what

funds are immediately available

Information is Beautiful is a blog that explains data and numbers in meaningful ways.

Google Now highlights the most important information for your day, based on time and location

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Better, Faster, Stronger

The Digitization of Self

We all know that interfaces inform the way we make

decisions, so it stands to reason that they can help us make

better decisions about things of great importance: our life

choices, our fitness, and our overall health. Great user

experience allows subtle cues for behavior change to

explode the quantified self movement.

“Seven in ten U.S. adults say they track at least one health indicator... [but only] 21% say they use some form of technology to track their health data.

- Pew Internet Research

2012 Feltron Report

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Better, Faster, Stronger

You Are What You Eat

The HAPIfork reminds users to eat more slowly.

LoseIt is one of many options for tracking diets - it even imports nutrition information by scanning a barcode.

Meal Snap makes calorie tracking easy - it calculates calories using photos.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Work It Out

Nike+ Kinect offers personal training using the Kinect’s sensor.

The Nike Fuel Band, Jawbone UP and Fitbit apply gamification principles to wearable fitness-tracking technology.

Strava encourages tracking and competition among cyclists.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Medical Breakthroughs

iBGStar plugs directly into iPhones, allowing diabetics to track their

blood glucose levels on the go.

Patients Like Me tracks symptoms, medication, and other health metrics across many disease states, offering support for patients and

contributing valuable research to the medical community.

23 and Me sequences an individual’s genomes through a spit sample, analyzing risk factors for diseases and revealing information about the user’s genetic background.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Changing Behavior

Everest (and its competitors, Lift and HealthMonth) helps users track daily

behaviors that relate to their goals.

LumoBack is a wearable sensor that alerts users to bad posture.

The Bandu watch monitors stress symptoms (such as perspiration, respiration, and heart rate) and advises its wearer to take a break and relax.

With 40% of premature deaths in the United States caused by

behavioral patterns*, perhaps the most fascinating area in which

user experience can help us in alerting us to and helping us change

destructive or unhealthy habits.

* Source: “We Can Do Better - Improving the Health of the American People” - The New England Journal of Medicine, 2007.

Found via Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2013.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Accelerated changes in technology over

the past 15 year’s have opened a wide new

world of experiences. The invention and

popularity of the internet, followed by

mobile and device proliferation, has

suddenly put technology in the hands of

the masses.

With so many people focusing on

technology, through both new hardware

and software startups, experience design

will begin to evolve even more quickly.

What was envisioned for ten years in the

future will be realized in five.

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Consumption of New Technologies Moves Faster Today

% of US households who adopted new technology over time. Via the New York Times, 2008

Looking Forward

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.- Alan Kay

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Little Arrows creates exceptional digital experiences for disruptive businesses.

175 Varick Street, 4th Floor

New York, NY 10014

(347) 948-3891 [email protected]

Get In Touch

linkedin.com/company/little-arrows

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Our Founders

Throughout her career, Marci has helped advertising

agencies, Fortune 500 brands, and start-ups to

communicate online through engaging, effective, and

elegant digital experiences. Prior to founding Little

Arrows, she was the Director of Digital and Channel

Strategy at Grey, growing the department threefold in

under a year. Marci has been widely recognized as a

leading voice in digital strategy in the communications

industry, speaking at events such as SXSW and Cannes. 

facebook.com/marciikeler

twitter.com/marciikeler

linkedin.com/in/marciikeler

Marci Ikeler

Aaron is a seasoned technically focused founder with

over 15 years experience in inventing, building and

scaling digital platforms for businesses of all sizes. He

started his career at Agency.com before co-founding

Inertia Beverage Group, the largest wine e-commerce

platform. In 2007 he co-founded the New York office of

POKE, leading creative technology projects for American

Express, Dell, Sephora, Johnson & Johnson, and more. In

2012, Aaron launched Valet.com, a luxury travel

destination, with partner Josh Spear.

facebook.com/neonarcade

twitter.com/neonarcade

linkedin.com/in/aaronrutledge

Aaron Rutledge

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Thank You!