Lesson 11 involved looking at the here, now and future of interaction, particularly futuristic designs which could be possible but aren’t yet here. The lecture was split into smaller sections to build towards futuristic designs, beginning with surveying the landscape.

Surveying The Landscape

We looked at changing contexts and designing for multiple screens and devices. It is important to be able to display the same information on multiple platforms from computer desktop or laptop to tablet or iPad to iPhone to apple watch or even paper. This is important for all adaptive and responsive web design that adjusts for different screens, even the first website was able to do that.

We also looked at how it is important to ensure we are designing for different web browsers, e.g. Chrome Firefox, Safari etc. This is to ensure that a user on any of these browsers have the same experience no matter which they choose.

 

 

The Web is Content

One important aspect that we looked at in this lecture is the content of a webpage. Content is like water – filling every space – but how will we consume and interact with it?

Content is seen everywhere, even in:

• Wearable designs such as the Apple Watch where there is small icons that can track exercise with heart rate monitors or weather using location services.
• Voice activated devices such as Google Home or Alexa.
• Smart home devices – e.g. controlling home heating temperatures (Nest – tracking movements of when you are home and create patterns to switch on the heating when needed)
• Ring doorbell – track movements and can form verbal communication with people outside your front door even when you’re not at home.
• Augmented Reality (AR) – e.g. driving around virtually in America to view houses for sale, IKEA using AR to view furniture to potentially put in your home.

A potential for the future:

Smart contact lens to record video or use instead of smart phones – can we remove the screen entirely? Or glasses that can project screens in front of you or voice activated glasses for, e.g. Alexa.

 

We looked at Augmedix (https://augmedix.com.bd) and watched a video showing the potential for the future of innovative health care technology that is emerging in Bangladesh. This uses Google technology to give patients a more personal experience and speed up time that would be spent on a computer logging patient’s medical profiles and information that could already be done for you during appointments using these voice activated glasses.

 

 

Future Interface Interactions

http://www.figlab.com

We looked at The Future Interfaces Group which is a research lab within Carnegie Mellon University. Here they create new sensing and interface technologies fostering interactions between humans and computers. These efforts often lie in emerging use modalities, such as smart environments, wearing computing, augmented reality, and gestural interfaces. We watched videos about how it is possible to only use human interaction, for example different swiping or tapping motions on specific fingers of the human hand to create certain interactions, instead of using buttons on a computer.

Hierarchy:

Next, we looked at hierarchy and how it can be applied to all our designs. It is important in terms of people understanding your work. For example, Hier by Daniel Burren – we generally look at largest writing to smallest. In this case, largest ‘hier’ then ‘daniel buren’ then smaller paragraph at the bottom. Regardless of it not being written in that order, your eyes naturally navigate in that size order. I also found that the colour didn’t necessarily impact the order that I read it in either and that it can be really effective when displaying more important information or pieces that you want the viewer to pick up on first.

 

Josef Müller Brockmann has similarly used hierarchy in many of his posters, alongside a limited colour palette and limited typography. In this example we initially see the largest, white type at the bottom – most notably the date 1963, before picking up on the smaller paragraph writing along the top. I think this is really interesting as even though visually speaking, the paragraph text comes first, we are still immediately drawn towards the bottom of the poster and therefore don’t necessarily the hierarchy based off what is shown on the poster first to last.

 

Overall

Looking at proportions, hierarchy, typography, compositions, systems and narrative : when they all come together they perform greatly. Great websites, magazine covers, or other content perform best with these elements all combining together.

 

‘Building Beautiful UIs’ by Christopher Murphy uses visual hierarchy of headings, a limited yet effective colour palette to help promote building beautiful UIs. This website is also responsive so it works on lots of different devices whether that is desktop or mobile.