The future of human experience

I recently spoke about the future of technology and experience on a panel hosted by David Di Sipio, accompanied by the brilliant Ben Gilmore and Will Egan. Here are highlights from my conversation with the host, the panelists, and the audience...

Mobile was the last big paradigm shift in consumer computing behaviour. We're now on the cusp of new shifts including augmented reality, virtual reality, and BCI (brain-computer interfaces). Before things like AR and VR take hold, we also have the world of VUI (voice user interfaces) to think about as professionals and as consumers.

“What are some suggestions you have for preparing for those future technologies?”

Wherever you fit in along the spectrum of being a technologist, an entrepreneur, or a designer, it's more important than ever to consider “what is the world going to look like in 5 years?” It's looking as though the 2D interfaces we use now will begin to become less relevant, and I see a time in the not too distant future is there will be far less reliance on any interface that has visual queues, such as buttons. When we begin to think about a time in the near future where you could ask Alexa, “I need a new BBQ that’s going to fit into my courtyard and can cater for 6 people. Buy the highest rated one you can find that I can still get delivered by this Saturday for less than $800,” you begin to appreciate profound longer term changes in the way we use technology, and how we design for it.

That sort of improvement in the contextual understanding of your environment, your preferences, your personal history — then making important decisions for you based on those — reveals a world where we’ll have to use Google less. We will no longer need to type into search boxes and look at lists of results.

If we no longer use visual interfaces as we know them today to perform tasks such as search, that is a dramatic shift for those who work on these interfaces, let alone the companies who profit from them. As UX designers and developers, it's in your best interests to divorce yourself from 2D interface exclusivity. We’re about accelerate into 3D space and zero space. Make sure you’re thinking beyond just 2D panes.

“What role does the study of neuroscience play in the future of creating experiences?”

I wouldn’t really know where to start, I’m certainly not a neuroscientist — but I’m happy to talk about what little I do know in this general area. For people wanting to understand interfaces beyond today's most common ones, grab yourself an Emotiv headset. From memory, it's a few hundred bucks, and it will let you train computer software to do things such as push and pull on-screen objects using your thoughts alone.

The problem with BCI right now is that there’s little commonality in how that push is achieved from person to person. Every individual has to train this pushing and pulling for themselves, instead of it just working out of the box. Elon Musk is now working on something called Neuralink, a next generation interface that intends to take this to the next level. Musk wisely wants to create a world where we can augment our intelligence to match that of increasingly sophisticated AI (artificial intelligence). You’ve also got Facebook working on brain-to-computer interfaces which let you 'write' at over 100 words to minute just by thinking the words, rather than saying them or typing them.

These BCI technologies could converge quite nicely in terms of timing and maturity with VR and AR, changing how we participate in simulated environments, and how we control augmented reality overlays — without using flaky gestures or typing. Anyone who has used Microsoft's HoloLens will understand just how frustrating user input can be as things are today.

Somewhat of a tangent, it's fascinating to consider that our brain itself doesn’t expreince anything directly — it’s trapped in darkness and silence within the walls of our skull. It’s only using the signals our body creates that it expereinces the world. Thinking about the ways we interface with our brain right now, we’re kind of already cyborgs. We strap into a car and we’ve augmented ourselves with the superpower of speed and an armoured shell. You can think about our phone and the internet as effectively unlimited memory, allowing us to access all of the world's information in close to an instant.

“Is AR really just about advertising, and VR the patform that could be far more meaningful?”

That might be where it is percevived to be right now, but I don’t think it’s where we’ll end up with these technologies. Where we’re headed with AR is something much more profound than current examples. I’m aligned with Apple on the belief that AR is going to be the next personal computing paradigm. In a sense, it will probably be the successor to the smartphone.

If you stop thinking about AR as holding up your phone in front of a magazine to reveal extra content, or holding it up on the street to see a Pokemon you need to catch, and instead start thinking about what kind of information could be dynamically displayed in your environment via a pair of spectacles, a contact lens, or indeed a neural interface, then the opportunities for personal benefit and efficiency are immense. Everything from real time directions, to ratings about a product you're looking at, and even the capacity of arriving buses — plus so much more. It will likely become our next 'default device' for general access to information. Whatever we need know at any moment, it can be presented within our field of vision.

On the topic of VR, I believe it's the ultimate empathy machine. The ability to educate people about other times, other places, and indeed other people, will begin to reduce conflicts caused by the pathological boundaries we create, such as those of religion and politics... VR will ultimately be an aid in reducing racism, sexism, and much prejudice. To be able to expreince someone’s life through their eyes, to understand what it means to be poverty stricken, or fleeing war, as if you were there... Yes, right now it’s low resolution, but soon enough it’ll be high resolution and we’ll be plugging in more of our senses. Imagine a student being able to experience the Roman Empire, to have it rebuilt and rendered, and then experienced as if they were there, instead of just reading about it in text.

VR and AR will serve generally different purposes. One will be about utility and efficiency, the other will be about experience and escapism. Beyond that, it's awe-inspiring to think about VR as the final platform. By that, I mean we could actually simulate anything inside of VR, including AR. Indeed: we could put on AR spectacles inside of our VR experience.

“What is the social impact of this kind of experience?”

There’s a natural tendancy to resist and reject progress based on your own nostalgia, experiences, and behaviours. In reality, millennials aren't victims of screens — they're the most social generation ever. Technology is enabling them to scocialise more than anyone ever has before, but they’re socialising in ways very different than what older generations are accustom to. This is increasingly true for many, many aspects of how we live our lives.

The important thing to remember is that we are continually designing our future. These changes are not happening to us against our will — it’s us who decides what we do and how we do it. We create these technologies, and collectively we accept them or reject them. If the value that a technology presents us is meaningful enough, then we make tradeoffs for it. We give up some privacy to be on Facebook because of the benefit, as an example. This will continue: tradeoffs for benefit versus potential deteriment. As long as we are net-gaining on our benefit and leaving comparative detriment in the dust, then we are always going to be in an overall better place.