A strong pattern emerged to me from a variety of publications that I had the time to read today. A new potential technological landscape is emerging in the world, and designers need to be vigilant to how we can help people find meaning amid ever-increasing complexity.
- The essence of technology is a new enframing of our world that can reveal a hidden potential danger to the human experience, as well as its very salvation: http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html (Martin Heidegger doing his philosophical thing in an essay)
- The Internet is moving away from being a browser-based experience, and towards the wide world of apps: http://m.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1 (Wired Magazine article titled “The Web Is Dead”)
- When billions use technology every day, we are doing a great disservice to humanity to lock out the individual from the MAKING side of technology: http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/every-user-a-developer/ (Adam Greenfield blog post titled “Every user a developer”)
- Given a world so heavily mediated by technology, designers need to better respect people’s divergent needs by designing and building tailored systems that each offer the potential for a more high-quality and satisfying experience: (Bill Buxton speaking at This Happened — Utrecht #6)
- The field of HCI increasingly has to address issues of societal, moral and ethical implications: http://mags.acm.org/communications/200903/?folio=58CFID=97701786&CFTOKEN=44400878#pg60 (ACM article titled “On Being Human”; subscription-only, sorry about that)
- Personally stepping away from technology can be a difficult yet valuable act: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 (NY Times article titled “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain”)
As an interaction design practitioner, I feel deeply that our discipline stands in a crucial position to better enable people to become more natural, connected, and satisfied with their experiences in our technologically-dominated world. When we look around our own lives and the lives of those we meet, we have to more clearly recognize the impact that technology is having on our human interactions as well as our internal sense of self. Dangerous distractions abound. We designers must keep our eyes free of the seductive veils of technology-qua-technology. We must ensure to the best of our abilities that the solutions we design for people will let them easily focus on whatever they need — whether productive or playful — at any given moment, and furthermore enable — or at least not subvert — people from becoming the kind of human they want to be.