The UI of Future Mobility
What bikes & scooters have to do with smart glasses — and why phones may become obsolete because they are too tied to your hands.
In this year’s edition of the Micromobility America conference, host and keynote speaker Horace Dediu finished his talk with the question what the future UI of mobility will be:
He was convinced that it’s not the Minority-Report-style futuristic display interfaces you would find in a Google image search.
Neither am I.
Pondering the question for my series here, the logical design conclusion ended up being some sort of mixed reality combination of voice (Siri) and AR/VR interfaces:
That’s also why Apple Vision Pro fits nicely into this framework. It’s a device that takes you anywhere but you are immobile yourself.
Two thoughts:
- The last time Apple introduced a new device category that wasn’t designed for mobile use was when it launched the first Mac Pro, 18 years ago.
- Surely the device will get smaller. But currently and for the foreseeable future, this thing is heavy and tied to a battery pack you store in your pocket.
Apple Vision Pro is meant for sitting down or maximum for standing in a controlled environment with maybe a few steps of range for your movements with the device. Which is in line with the three expected use cases of a self-driving car: Work, work out, hang out.
Most of the time you travel, though, you will sit.
This is how I thought about smart glasses in cars so far. I even shot a campaign using Meta’s RayBan Stories – more regular sun glasses than actual smart glasses, but still a solid lifestyle upgrade to your car.
It wouldn’t do much more than take a photo of your dashboard (see photo on the right) with questionable quality. And it would kind of overlay the other interfaces that are going on in today’s cars.
Meta is still investing in RayBan Stories, though, and so we can see two developments in parallel:
- Apple coming from the high end with Vision Pro, maybe downsizing the device to regular glasses.
- Meta starting with the accepted form factor of sunglasses and adding features along the way.
Will the two ever meet in terms of form factor? Maybe. But I doubt it. There’s too much R&D and time between the two approaches, it would probably take decades to advance light smart glasses up to the point of current available state-of-the-art specs of a Pro device.
Micro and Macro
What I do imagine is that these two devices are actually capable of each going after one of the two major mobility scenarios everyone is expecting:
- Micromobility devices on which you’re in touch with your surroundings, able to immediately stop anywhere you like and using your hands to accelerate and steer the device.
- Routed autonomous cars which will have a pod-like design with nice seating, where you have your hands free to direct a XR device but are somewhat removed from your surroundings as a consequence.
Eventually, Meta can go after the billions of people using shared micro mobility devices to find friends, shops and experiences. This is in tune with their advertising-based business model and gives them a viable path beyond smartphones. This device (like scooters and ebikes) is platform-agnostic and works with anything. It still needs something like Apple’s „Look around“ UI design and the location data.
Apple goes after the premium market of people able to afford both autonomous vehicles and expensive head sets. These trips would typically go longer and farther, hinting at more affluent lifestyles. A smaller but more profitable market where you pay for the device, not follow on ads. This is a classic closed ecosystem approach, which is in tune with the overall security and safety you will appreciate sitting eyes-covered in a robot car.
So here are these two scenarios:
Note that both have little to do with smartphones and have entirely different, almost invisible use cases when on the go. In a sense, smartphones are for your hands while walking with your feet – or any passive mobility mode when you’re the passenger. But active mobility requires different UIs, and autonomous mobility results in new environments altogether.
Both will be used in our streets. Will they get along and see eye to eye?
