We’re now so blasé about our Computers, Phones and other devices , that what has become far more important is our experience when interacting with them. Over the past few years we moved on from the wonder, discovery and acceptance phases and landed directly in the impatience phase. If you don’t think this is true here’s a little thought exercise for you:
Image by Gleb Kuznetsov✈
Quick test
The next time you are in an elevator and the door takes about 5 seconds (yes 5 seconds) to start closing, do you or someone in the elevator hit the close door button? Now think, after the button is pressed and the doors have started to close, do you feel better or at least less impatient?
"Ok brace yourself”
In a study by the New York Times, 3,250 elevator close buttons were tested, most were found to be mechanical placebos with a mere 120 working buttons found. That’s right, just over 3.5% of the elevator close buttons actually did something.
Ambient Computing
This brings us to ambient computing. Today’s user, expects things to ‘just work’. Look at keyless cars. If the driver is close to the car and has the key in their pocket, the car just opens, making the pressing of the unlock button unnecessary. In the same vein, we are slowly falling in love with virtual assistants to avoid tapping those buttons. Why navigate through pages and menus when you can just talk to a chat interface and order your next coffee, turn off the lights or play a music track.
In the same way that your phone most likely no longer has a physical keypad and has beefed up its voice-based assistant, you can now talk to your car, your lights, your watch and even your fridge. How many times have you set timers, a reminder or asked how to spell Goondiwindi (sorry just need to ask Siri and he/she got it on the second try). Interestingly, Google Home could not spell Goondiwindi after several tries, "I guess you can’t believe what you see on TV (Google Home TVC)"; without even needing to tap a button. Just speak and your house obeys.
I am willing to admit that I am worse than most here. My lights turn on when my phone connects to my home wifi, my front door unlocks when my smart watch is within 2m, the security system turning on, air conditioning turning off if my smart watch goes more than 100m from the house and so on.
With your BMW having keyless entry and go, gesture control and self guidance assist, your iPhone containing a modified PowerVR Furian GPU and iOS 11s AR kit, Hue lights, Kwikset Kevo smart lock and Alexa added to your LG fridge. This all means that you can drive home listening to you favourite music, park your car, find that your fridge has ordered groceries (having consulted www.foodswitch.com.au beforehand to improve your health), your front door unlocked, the lights on and the house at the correct temperature all without tapping a button. Oh and you will be able to look through your phone screen using AR to see exactly how to make the meal your fridge has ordered for you.
That’s right you or other machines are talking to machines. We humans just sit back and expect results.
What does that mean?
So what does that mean for the average business looking to develop a website currently?. At it’s most basic level, as we expect our interactions with technology to be increasingly seamless, it means a lot more development expertise will be required. And definitely means that you can never set and forget your site as the oncoming iteration is even more important than it’s current state.
This is because removing the interface is not a magic trick, it’s the development protocols and systems that take the place of user interface, and that’s a lot harder than it seems. Designing and building protocols is far more time intensive and requires a deeper understanding of the user’s needs and human systems or expectations as we map methodical freeways of human-designed protocols.
The way we interact with Devices is taking its first evolutionary steps since the 70s. So it's time to make sure you have a good relationship with your UX team and have a strong team of developers because at the end of the day you're users will simply expect it.