A post-screen world: How tomorrow’s interfaces will be different to everything you use today
- Thomas Gayno, Product Lead at Spotify, on the future of user interfaces
- It’s time to build a new, invisible interface that’s as powerful as the GUI
- Hate dictating private conversations in public? It’s you that’ll change, not the technology
We mainly interact with our tech by prodding, swiping and tapping at small glass screens. And yet… shouldn’t the experience should be more exciting, like Sci-Fi movies, where you talk or gesture at your machine?
Thomas Gayno has spent a decade creating innovative ways for people to interact with devices, at Google — where he worked on Android’s design and Google Glass — and now, as Product Lead At Spotify.
He shared his experience and philosophy with us, including what will happen as we move into a post-screen world, and how our aversion to voice input might need us, not the tech, to change.
Listen to him speak and read his vision for a screen-free future:
On how films dictate design for years:
“Minority Report — Tom Cruise playing with icons on a huge screen — became a huge reference point for UX designers. Now the movie “Her” is inspiring designers for possibly another decade.”
On why reinventing the “basics” is important:
“I believe in instincts and what your gut is telling you — that’s how the greatest inventions come about. We shouldn’t reinvent everything… but we are forced to reinvent things here.
“The GUI was perfect and it has revolutionised the way we have been working… there’d be no Daft Punk without the GUI. It doesn’t mean [GUI] is bad but now we have this new generation of computers, so let’s build something for them.”
Music streaming UI is still the same as a 3rd-gen iPod — here’s where Spotify is going:
“From a design standpoint the interface now is the same as 3rd Generation iPod: Art Cover, play button, menu button… but now Spotify has built up a huge catalogue and user base, how does Spotify work on a phone that is incredibly more powerful than that iPod?”
“Spotify Running is maybe the first really strong example of what you can do to leverage the amazing capability of your phone to do something new: creating on-the-fly playlists according to your pace and the music you like.”
On how talking out loud to a machine isn’t “private” enough:
“It’s psychological and sociological — if you go to China where it’s very common to speak loudly on the street and the notion of privacy is very different, people are massively using voice messaging — they just don’t mind.
“In Argentina we have seen voice messaging become extremely popular — this was the first country in the Western world where this happened… they understand that voice because it’s faster than typing.”
On how to invent the future:
“Tomorrow’s devices should be unobtrusive… something so “you” that it dissolves into your life. The movie Her is a great example of that…. Design should be more analogue, more natural feeling.
“[The Her makers] decided to think about what devices they would actually like to put in their living room or their pocket — and that’s how anyone designing for these devices should think.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
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