Time is broken.
Well, it may not be broken, but, from where I stand, it isn’t moving at the same pace it used to. Maybe it’s because I’m about to cross a particularly notable threshold (I leave my 30s in four days) or maybe… it’s because time is speeding up.
I’m not talking about anything like information overload, a clear and present danger in our plugged-in age. I’m talking about the future – the event horizon that is supposed to be always beyond our grasp. It’s here. It’s arrived, and it’s not what it used to be.
Let me explain. One of my favorite shows is Mad Men, a show set in the early 1960s, and the touches of technology they showcase in their episodes are usually perceived as amazing marvels that all the characters get excited about. The first season episode where the office gets a Xerox machine is particularly memorable – the secretaries linger around it like groupies (BTW, the machine also has a Twitter account).
Today… well, we are surrounded by marvels, and no one notices. As Louie CK so famously said on the Conan O’Brian show “Everything is amazing, and no one is happy.” The constant exposure to technology has cheapened it – it is now commonplace, something taken for granted… and when (to quote that great ad slogan for the classic movie Westworld) “something goes worng”, people go crazy. Both Google’s GMail and Twitter suffered prolonged outages the past month, and people reacted like someone shot their new puppy.
(Let’s hope no one every sets off an EMP over the west coast… because we will have a LOT more problems to deal with than Twitter being down…)
The Future of Today is really great in many many ways… but It’s not Star Trek‘s utopia, nor it’s Blade Runner‘s dystopia, it’s… today. Now.
The Future of Today.
Remember the future we dreamed about as a kid? With jet packs and rocket cars and tickets to the moon? Well, the pace of innovation has brought us that future, but instead of technology bringing all of us out to new frontiers, it has helped us work from home – from our bed, even. It has helped us keep in touch with friends and relatives we would never talk to on a regular basis without it – artificial relationships, courtesy of Facebook and MySpace. It has drawn us inward, not outward.
So, if you have read this so far, you are probably going, “what in frak does this have to do with user experience design?” (Well, you may not use the word “frak,” unless you are a Battlestar Galactica fan) Well, everything.
Technology is the reason we all HAVE jobs designing applications and researching users. It has also produce behavioral and attitudinal changes that will have impacts on our society for decades. We need to appreciate the future we have been given and be keenly aware of how technology is changing how people work, live, and thrive.
The best example, to me, is in the mobile space. Can you imagine living without your mobile device, even if it is only a “dumb” phone, free with contract? Yeah, me neither. The ubiquitous access to technology through mobile devices is changing where people do things and how people do things. If you are UX designer or researcher and am not paying attention to this – you better start. Otherwise, like the typesetters of the previous century, you may quickly find yourself out of a job.
Attitudes, too, are changing. As I posted in a previous blog there is something I call the Immediacy of Now – the growing desire to know or do something immediately. The mobile devices are a part of it, but there is also the patience levels of users. I have noticed it has been decreasing over time, and this, again, is a reflection of how technology has reset expectations. Pay this close attention.
Finally, there is the expectations that systems are smarter that they usually are. With all the new Web 2.0 apps and sites that users have been exposed to over the past few years, their baseline has been raised. Gen Y, especially, have high expectations when it comes to what a web service or product should provide. Be prepared to raise the bar to meet those expectations.
In the Future of Today, impatience is a virtue. Time… and the future, waits for no one.