Reflections on the next Cool platform: CHI 2012
“What will be the next sweeping cool experience?” I was asked.
We had a great time at CHI meeting so many energetic, enthusiastic, and creative people. Together we will all invent the next generation of game-changing and life-changing products. We loved sharing our Cool Concepts defining the cool user experience, and look forward to seeing all of you and your teams at our upcoming workshop in California. We loved talking about your challenges with Agile and how to use field data for innovation in our other courses. The panel with Aaron and Eric was also a first – and we all wore hats – to commemorate three consultant/advisors sharing the stage! Thanks Joe!
But now to my musings during the conference.
Over twenty years ago when I first came to CHI the early Interactivity Sessions displayed researchers’ “what if’s” and prototypes of what could become our ways of interacting in the world with technology in the future. These displays are good examples of foundational innovation, innovation that is not really ready for prime time or practical enough to bring into everyday lives – but that suggest worlds to come.
Over twenty years ago I saw a screen with some sort of sensors and if I moved, an image on the screen moved. There were also gloves and glasses and other clumsy ways of “seeing” or “being” in an alternative world which had no attraction for me. But this physical way of interacting with what was effectively a “wall” to create music or movement caught and held me --- and I’m still watching it grow up.
This year’s Interactivity session took me back. I saw the BodiPod which kinda sorta worked to let you see the human anatomy and strip off layers of it visually to get down to the bones – if you wore a particular hat and motioned in a particular way. It is the “wall based” body book with transparent overlays of my youth alive and big.
I saw Disney’s idea of Surround Haptics where you play a “wall based” game by operating a controller – but every time your little bot goes over a grid you feel it in the back of the chair (hidden lower left) – a massage chair??? well not quite.
I saw the Hanging Off the Bar game. Now the floor is the environment surface that is changing. Jump to get out of the way – exercise by gaming!
Probably my favorite of the “wall” based interactions is the Zero Touch display. I think of it as an artist’s palate. By using a phone as a color source and the hand as a pen you can produce art on a very large flat screen display if you “draw” inside of a hanging picture frame. But imagine the world if you could just draw directly on your whole wall!
These envisionments portray us interacting in new ways inside of our living spaces. Other exhibits, like Lovely Rita, see us moving through our living spaces with special digital props. Rita brings the self into the world by giving us a suit of lights that we can change to alter our presence.
hipDisc lets you move to create sound all around you – is it the reinvention of the Hula Hoop or a new kind of instrument?
And I loved the Joggobot, the flying saucer robot who can follow you jogging like a dog – if you wear the right T-shirt.
So what might be the next transformative platform? What might change our lives in the same kind of profound way as touch phones and tablets?
Starting with WYSIWYG and drag and drop interface, and continuing through the Web we’ve been able to transform our everyday tasks, activities, and information desires. But as The Cool Project findings reveal, the impact of touch phones and tablets have gone far beyond that. They focus us on design for life. Yes, task still matters. But now we face a demand and an ability to support the whole of life: getting everything done while on the move; using every piece of time to help us move all of our activities and relationships along every day; keeping us from being bored when faced with dead time. The availability of content and small focused apps, the speed of access, and the magic of touch and voice interactions helps us live our lives in ways we have never imagined possible – and with a freedom we have never had before. What could be next?
Part of being human is living in and moving through space. People have created their worlds since we first found a cave to live in, since we built houses, parks, and cities. We have bodies we like to decorate and energy to run and dance. We are creative and we create in the world: on walls and surfaces and through sculpture. When I look at this year’s and past Interactivity displays I see space-based design; design for the human in space; the unfettered living in our world in new and marvelous ways.
In our prototypes we are imagining digital walls or wallpaper. Turn on your music/color system so movement and song is reflected in colored moving streaks on the walls, or images, and complimentary sound all around you here in your relaxing space. Create your art directly on your walls and in 3D rotating digital displays. Attend your yoga class for exercise – at home. Design your physical space – the real physical space in which you can work, and rest, and play and create. And imagine it with no heavy set up and simple controls.
Go to the grocery store on the walls of your kitchen – or shop on the walls of buildings you pass. Design for the person in space. I’m not talking about the holodeck – we aren’t anywhere near that yet. And I’m not a fan of glasses or other reality enhancers that become an appendage – I like to feel like I’m in the real world. So I believe that the next real transformation will be in our relationship to the spaces in our world.
And, more than 20 years later, we are on our way. Microsoft’s Dance Central using Kinect caught everyone up dancing at CHI. It’s not on the wall yet but it is coming into the home. It’s not independent of the Xbox – but it could be. It’s still about games – but it could be about other experiences as well. Seeing Machines teamed up with Toshiba to create a 3D movie/game experience with no glasses by tracking your eyes. It can only track one person at a time now, but wait for the future. And then there is real virtual shopping on the subway walls in Korea today. It uses paper display and the phone to select items. All of these products and more like them are recreating our world within our living spaces.
Design for life spaces is coming. We are creating the building blocks. We are prototyping new ideas. We are getting these environments out of the museums, and the iMAX, and billboards and into our daily lives. We don’t know what will catch on. And we don’t know what will really work well enough for people to use it. Will it be just the walls? Will we like wearing things to enhance our world? Will we be able to touch and dance and sing and do art? Will we enhance our relationships by creating settings to interact with each other more? Or create such compelling experiences that it will pull us away from others? Will we bring our vacation scenes and sounds into our homes?
The transformative foundational technology and platforms needed for this future isn’t there yet. But I see it coming and it will transform us as human beings again.
