Not so long ago, using the Internet meant one thing: sitting at a desk, at home or at work, in front of a personal computer. The user might have had different purposes in their use of the web, but much of the conditions under which they used it remained constant. As designers and developers, our assumptions about these conditions were baked into how we created websites and services.
Now, however, those assumptions are all out the window. Starting with the introduction of the original iPhone, every few years has brought not only new Internet devices, but entirely new form factors. Smartphones, tablets, and soon wearables such as smartwatches and glasses will create entirely new use cases for the Internet. People now interact with the web as they drive, shop, work, commute, exercise, eat in restaurants, and drink in bars. Additionally, multiple device usage has become commonplace: People start tasks on one device and finish them on another. Data analysis of user behavior makes mass personalization and behavioral segmentation possible. Who a user is, where they are, what they are trying to accomplish, and the type of device they’re using all matter. The result: The next generation of the web will be driven by context.
The World Of “Contextual” Applications
Google Now and Apple’s Siri are examples of purely “contextual” applications, each designed to interact and respond to an individual’s unique circumstances. Smaller players include calendar apps like Tempo and the virtual assistant app Donna, both for iOS.
But there’s a problem. The way we currently design websites and services does not fit with the potential of the contextual web, and the capabilities that this new technology affords. We need to find a new way to design web services. We need a new way to think about web services. And the key is to back to basics–back to long-lost art of the face-to-face conversation.
But designing a new generation of contextual apps and websites is extremely difficult, in part because we lack a language in which to describe them. That’s where the face-to-face conversation metaphor comes into play. Face-to-face conversations are all about intuiting the context of the person to whom you’re speaking and responding appropriately. By modeling these new apps and websites on conversations, the Internet will become a more dynamic, more natural, more conversational medium for humans interacting with software.
This new breed of applications will be the fruit of decades of artificial intelligence research, combined with the relatively new proliferation of Internet-connected devices. Smartphones, tablets, and wearable technology can all gather data for the purpose of informing contextual applications about their users’ circumstances.
Living In A World Of Boxes and Arrows
Currently, we have a very user interface-centric way of approaching application design. A single user interface is the comprehensive conduit for a user’s interaction with an application. The “boxes and arrows” approach that is popular in UX design reflects this thinking. Up until now, this approach has worked fairly well, however it is poorly equipped to articulate this new generation of contextual applications.