5. Experience Future

Part of the series on the field of Experience Design

The Tempescope displays the weather using iot technology. Letting users “see” the weather the next day without having to look at a screen.

The field of experience design is transitioning and evolving each year.

Human interactions in the digital world is already transitioning from desktop to mobile interactions. Mobile will soon shift to pervasive computing embedding elements and sensors in our everyday lives including, clothes, homes, cars, and daily living spaces. The experience will be altered in how we interact with our surrounding environments from our homes to our mobility. (Forsyth and Martin, 2012)

Physical experiences will become invisible requiring “minimal impact on the user and should work seamlessly to mediate a user’s interaction” (Forsyth and Martin, 2012) The complexity in combining the tasks of hundreds of sensors to improve our lives in an opportunity for the experience design field. With emerging roles such as inter-usability design, to understand the interactions not just between user and computer but with multiple devices.

A button to turn off the mic mode on the Amazon echo. A design feature to stop the system from listening.

The use of voice activated interfaces such as Amazon Echo and Siri are creating new complex interactions with digital products, no longer needing screens and mobile apps for commands.

As technology advances and computers predict our needs and monitor our activities, designer face not only technical but psychological. (Forsyth and Martin, 2012)

This future will require designers to work in interdisciplinary teams of engineers, designers, psychologists, researchers, fashion designers and industrial designers. Speaking with Ahmad Baitalmal Chief Product Architect at Xerox Parc (the team who developed the first idea of network products coined by them as “ubiquitous computing”) revealed working across cross functional teams is currently still a challenge in the field.

Forsyth and Martin (2012) argue that both designers and engineers need to “engage in “design” to resolve problems, but they view the process differently”.

Simply designing a better experience is not enough. New methods, tools and frameworks need to be created for the benefit of innovators and consumers.