It was a joy to open The Guardian last Friday, and see these beautiful diagrams displaying statistical data on ‘The internet’s undersea world’. It really cheered me up on a cold, boring train journey out of London.

They are reminiscent of Minard’s depiction of the fate of Napoleon’s army, displayed in Edward Tufte’s book ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’. It’s a classic that seems to be getting a lot of press over the last few years – due partly to the rise in internet use.

I’ve recently started blogging for the Chinwag community, a ‘focal point for digital media practitioners in the UK and beyond’. Take a look here.

Yesterday Bill Gates spoke to the BBC about his future predictions for user interfaces – quite similar to those I talked about at the Chinwag Live: Xmas Futures, Crystal Balls? event...

We are entering a new age of ubiquitous computing, where we are surrounded by intelligent services. The interfaces to many of these services will not be through the ‘traditional’ desktop computer and mouse, but through relatively new ways of connecting; including multi-touch surfaces, and those with no visual representation such as Brain Computer and gestual interfaces. 

In the 1960s we began developing a visual language for multimedia. This visual language has grown up, come of age; familiar iconic metaphors are everywhere; and not necessarily intuitive to the uninitiated.

But with these new ways of interfacing, come new possibilities; more intuitive ways of interacting, which often have an emotional response. And of course – new problems.

Interface, interaction designers and usability experts must expand their knowledge across new disciplines, and hardware & software must work more closely in tandem to create a unified experience that upholds brand values – whatever the input mechanisms.

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. 

The ‘wisdom of clouds’ heralded as an original way for users to peruse ideas within Internet Evolution's ThinkerNet blogosphere, has a graphical user interface that is embarrassingly bad. In fact it’s so bad, I immediately looked at it on a PC to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything.

It’s not an original idea, and the claim that it allows visitors to take a virtual flight through a cloudbank of ideas is just laughable – which I guess is part of the point of this. ‘Linkbaiting’ says Stowe Boyd.

However, even if that is the case, I wish they’d commissioned a designer to do a bit of work on the interface. Creating a more efficient use of screen space by reducing the navigation box and resizing the posts so that you could get more on the screen at any one time would help enormously.

I read in The Observer this weekend that two of Bollywood’s biggest film stars were racially abused while filming in Southall, west London. The idiocy of such abuse sprang to mind immediately, but not until I’d gotten over the fact that seeing the photograph I’d originally thought the story was about Second Life.

When I touched my first iPhone in September I felt happy. It made me smile; it seemed so simple, so obvious. Isn’t this the way all things should be?

We all know that its design is fundamental to its success as a product, but it’s the integration of the hardware and software, the way they work together that really makes the difference.

The screen is large 320 x 480, the interface is clear and simple to use and it feels like a complete product rather than a collection of disparate elements packaged together. So many other devices fail in this most fundamental of areas. It also wins hands down on the simplicity of initialising the handset and the way it integrates with iTunes. All these aspects have been designed to make it an enjoyable experience.

But the key thing to remember is that it’s a new type of device that is already redefining the market, a (usable) computer and phone, so people will use it differently. Friends are using their iPhones in and around the home and office instead of their laptops – the iPhone is making people act in different ways.

From a designers point of view this means that we need to adapt and change our designs, creating interfaces that work in new and appropriate ways. We need to look at different types of devices to appropriate our ideas from as essentially we are creating hardware like interfaces - in software. Yes, something we’ve been doing for years, but now the bar has been raised. With the iPhone there’s more screen real estate to play with and it’s being used in a fundamentally different way. 

The experience and desirability of the iPhone is so strong that people are willing to overlook potential problems: the £269 price tag; a contract with O2 in the UK; the fact that it's a closed device, and still buy them. Between 20,000 to 40,000 were sold in the first weekend according to the Telegraph. There’s definitely a market there, one that’s switched on to good design, but is that market big enough.

But to create such a product you need a visionary (or two) and you need an organisation that is prepared to use design in the way it should be used. This coupled with the fact that technology now allows such a device to be designed for a realistic price tag.

I couldn’t wait for the UK launch. I needed a new phone quickly and so plumped for the next best choice – the Nokia N95 on the 3 network (the only network with unlimited data usage at the time). The camera is good (albeit slow), the GPS great and the way it syncs with my Mac OK (comparatively). When I first started using it though I was disappointed, the interface was disappointing and downright crude in places. It’s good, but it didn’t make me smile.

My husband on the other hand was prepared to wait. I’m jealous. He’s smiling.