Has this ever happened to you? You walk into a restroom and you put your hand under the tap, only to realize after 5 seconds of performing hand gestures under it that it is a manual tap? Then, you go to the paper towel dispenser and look for the lever to press, only to realize after another five seconds of basically reenacting the monolith scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that it’s an automated one?
This is kind of where we are at right now. We are in a liminal state, betwixt and between the upgrading of the past and the rethinking of the future. This will be an interesting time for us, as we get used to these hybrid experiences, and a constant recalibration of what we expect vs. what is available to us. The kicker is that this is all very contextual. We may step out of a high tech restroom into a purely analog room, only to walk outside into a hybrid vehicle environment, where it doesn’t quite drive itself, but it is eerily self aware in terms of which of its systems is not performing to standard (read: check engine light).
Pressure from clients to produce things that we can use now will also steer us in the direction of upgrading the past in order to get that quick win. It is always easier to just enable the status quo, but the sustainability in any endeavour lies in enabling the future as opposed to supporting the past.
As people who design user experiences — whether in virtual or analog environments — we need to start challenging ourselves and our clients into practices that are more about rethinking the future of not just the thing we are designing experiences for, but also the other parts in the experience chain that may be affected by these changes. We need to start asking the really interesting questions for which we do not already have a good portion of the answers as a result of being in a mindset of upgrades and adaptability rather than rethinking.
