The Impact of Disappearing Design in Computing

TED starts in 2 days. I’m really excited. It’s quickly become a place for me to recharge my batteries, generate new ideas, make new friends and get a new and better perspective on things that matter to me.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Let’s talk about design for a moment.

While design aesthetic is often in the eye of the beholder, I think most would agree with me that Apple is far and away the leader in design as it relates to computing. What’s particularly interesting to me about Apple’s design is that it’s physically disappearing. Look at the iTouch or the recently announced iPad and you’re basically looking at a software UI behind a screen in an incredibly thin enclosure and nothing more. This enclosure will become ever thinner over time. Other than that there is nothing there! That’s truly amazing and unheard of in the first 35 years of personal computing whose user experience has been defined by keyboards, mice, trackballs, portable disks, external monitors, and more.

The implication of the absence of physical design is that software is now 100% of the user experience.

Truth be told design isn’t actually disappearing it’s simply becoming 100% about the software since there is really nothing else left to interact with.

I believe this elimination of physical design in favor of software design will continue until it’s the norm.

What this means is that we’re in store for a necessary revolution in computer/human interaction. If the hardware disappears we must interact directly with software bypassing hardware altogether. Of course, that is not quite yet the case today. Even with the iTouch/iPad the physical interface is a touch screen which acts as an interface into the operating system. The next step could be a wearable device that projects on the hand with similar iPhone or “Minority Report” like gestures. What if you saw the “iPhone like” UI in your head but didn’t have to physically hold a tablet or use your hands to gesture?

As the physical design of the last 30 years disappears the software/cognitive design of the next 50 years will be forced to take it’s place. The implications for education, entertainment, communications and office productivity are astounding. What if you could effectively inhale software that your brain could control directly? What if you could interact “wirelessly” with a computer program directly via your brain vis-a-vis the Matrix or the Borg nano-particles of Star Trek. An inevitable reality of computing, is the fulfillment of our desires to connect everything and eliminate interaction latency while maintaining an appealing design aesthetic. Modern mobile computing is starting to scratch the surface of disappearing physical design. In this world physical design disappears and software design takes its place.

Posted via email from The Blog of Bill Barhydt