The Sate of UX Design Today
The digital space is evolving fast and every experiences are made better day by day. User behaviors and patterns plays a lot of role in the evolution of user experience. Leverage the world of opportunities to craft something beautiful.
Interactive Voice Control
In a connected world, audio has the power to cut through the clutter — often with a more emotionally resonant and intimate message than other forms. It’s time to leverage this and build something delightful.
The newest opportunity in the digital world, the impact on consumers lies in audio and voice. From Amazon Alexa to the Google Assistant, voice-activated devices and chat-bots were among the hottest in the market now. The increased reliance on machine learning and AI-based content and interactive voice control systems has already taken over the digital experiences. Designers will add procedural literacy and algorithmic thinking to their skill sets to meet the needs and manifest the desires of people.
Voice-activated content sits right at the heart of what consumers want: Control!
In fact, an NPR and Edison Research survey (Smart Audio Report, Fall/Winter 2017) shows that 16 percent of Americans now have a smart speaker, a 128 percent surge since January 2017. Further, 7 percent of all Americans bought at least one smart speaker between November and December of last year. Clearly, America is catching on really quickly.
What about the in-car experience? Entertainment opportunities created when the driver no longer has to worry about manning the steering wheel or pressing buttons on the dash. Cars are getting smarter — and, yes, they understand voice commands. Digital audio services already have a leg up here, given the ability to use mobile devices to tailor your personalized music experience upon entering the car.
Intelligent by Design
The age of intelligent software has arrived. From anthropomorphic assistants like Siri and Alexa, to events from your email that show up in your calendar, to contextual app suggestions on your home screen, today’s apps do more than just execute commands and respond to clicks: they adapt, predict, anticipate.
Defining Intelligence
So what does it mean to be smart? Software appears intelligent when it exceeds user expectations of its capabilities in ways that assist with task completion.
Part of the allure of intelligent apps is their ability to adapt to adjust themselves based on what they know about us, our behavior, and our current situation. Those changes often introduce uncertainty effectively, probabilistic modality and the degree of uncertainty tends to increase with the sophistication of the algorithm.
Lets take Google as an example: Android P is not just making launching and switching apps faster, they are also bringing the right content and control to users via predicted actions and slices — new UI templates that can display interactive content from your app.
When you pull up to see all of your apps, you’ll also see predicted actions so that you can quickly take an action. Slices will bring rich content and functionality to users at the time and place they need them, and when they are most relevant. By directly displaying deeper functionality from apps in the OS, Android is more efficient and easier to use.
Accessible by Design
One of the most exciting things about design is how working to solve a particular problem can lead to not only a solution to that problem, but broader applications as well. It’s not everyday you get create a meaningful impact in people’s lives. Building features for Deaf and hard of hearing people has been and continues to be an exciting challenge.
Here is an example showing importance of accessibility. UBER Case-study (Deaf drivers):
What many drivers were most concerned about was finding a better way to communicate with riders. They wanted to be able to tell their passengers they were Deaf before the pickup. Deaf drivers were often disabling the calling option, since if a rider called, the driver would not be able to hear her. But the rider would not know why calling wasn’t working, causing frustration for riders and drivers alike, and raising the probability of cancellations. We added a notification to let riders know their driver was Deaf or hard-of-hearing, and that they should message their driver if they needed to get in touch.
Gesture Control
Even though gestural controls have been around since the early 1980s from ZTM Data Glove developed by Zimmerman and have enjoyed a level of ubiquity since the early 2000s, designers are still in the beta-testing phase of making gestural controls intuitive for everyday use.
Apple has a patent on the gestures that we ourselves incorporate into our muscle memory. They bring us together without knowing it as a group that can’t live without swiping left on the iPhone. To them, we are army of swipe lefters and righters together in one place. They control us because we incorporate them.
Touchless gestures may be coming to iPhones in three years time. Apple reportedly experimenting with 3D gesture controls.
According to a new report from Bloomberg in April 2018, Apple has begun experimenting with 3D gestures for future iPhones. The touchless gesture controls for iOS may be coming in three years time, in an attempt to further differentiate flagship iPhones in a very saturated smartphone market. People familiar with Apple’s plans have revealed that the 3D touchless gestures would allow users to move their fingers above the screen to navigate through the menu without touching the display.
Mycestro Wearable Mouse
Use gestures to control your cursor on the computer screen. The Mycestro Wearable Mouse takes the entire operation to a new level with the help of gesture control. It’s ideal for use on planes or conferences or any other place that lacks the presence of horizontal surfaces.
ZKOO — The World’s Most Advanced Gesture Tracking Camera
Interact with the apps on your device in a whole new way with ZKOO, the world’s most advanced gesture tracking camera. Working with PC and Android devices and connecting to your TV, this camera has incredibly quick and accurate gesture tracking up tot ten feet away. Your gestures are instantly read and translated into controls, letting you interact with with apps like never before.
Digital Wellbeing by Design
We all send a very good part of our day on screens including TV, Computers, mobiles and lot more devices. In today’s world the our average screen time has drastically increased at least by 30%.
How can we tackle this situation and offer digital well-being for our users to have quality time off screens.
Great technology should improve life, not distract from it.
Google’s YouTube has rolled out a new feature which prompts the users to take a break if they are watching a long video. They say, We’re creating tools and features that help people better understand their tech usage, focus on what matters most, disconnect when needed, and create healthy habits for the whole family.
Remind yourself to take a break.
Schedule custom breathers as often as you want, pausing what you’re currently watching and encouraging you to step away.
See how much you watch.
Your time watched profile gives you a closer look at how much time you spend on YouTube, as well as comparisons to previous time periods.
Manage your time spent in apps.
The app timer lets you set limits for how much you use your apps. When you’ve reached that limit, the app icon is grayed out for the rest of the day.
Disconnect at night.
Wind Down gets your phone ready for bed by letting you schedule changes to the display. Activating Night Light reduces blue light and Grayscale gets rid of all color, reminding you to switch off for the night.
Helping families find the right balance.
The Future is now!
Updates Curated from : Uber Design, Google Design, Diyan Ivanov, Renee Carmichael,
Dave Feldman.
