Screen sizes on the decrease?

I spoke recently at the Chinwag Live: Xmas Futures, Crystal Balls? event. Most of the really interesting discussions happened after the presentations, but here's a taster of one of my predictions:

In 2012 most people’s experience of the web will be through mobile devices – mobile will be the centre of the internet; and central to our lives. Increased functionality will make such devices even more useful, and an always-open connection to the internet means they will be used in many different ways many of which we cannot begin to predict.

So the primary and central interface to the internet and many other applications will be smaller than what we are used to now; and although many websites already have mobile specific interfaces, they will become increasingly important. They will be the first interface that is designed rather than a further add on – when finances and time permit. 

Although the screens may be smaller than the standard 1024x768 or 800x600 many are used to working with now, they will have improved UIs that are not restrained by most current, completely inefficient, mobile UI thinking. The tasks that people will carry out (often at the same time) will be more complex, there will be different contexts of interaction, they will interact with us, and we will have designed efficient user interfaces that deal with this.

And importantly there will be a closer relationship between hardware and software (a real bugbear of mine) – and one of the reasons why the iPhone is so gorgeous.

And it’s important not to forget the emotional response we already have to our existing personal media devices; and whatever they morph into in the future this response will only get stronger. They will become our companions, teachers and more practically our secretaries – organising our lives for us, taking some of the strain – creating a dependency.

How we do all of this within a limited number of pixels is a challenge that is being worked on right now. 

This entry was posted on December 12th, 2007 and is filed under Interface, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.