Future Trends in Usability – World Usability Day Discussion
Thanks to everybody who came last night to our World Usability Day event. We had a lot of fun and hope you did too.
Some discussions were held around what trends we will be seeing in the coming year. Most of these seem to be technology driven, and many will present interesting usability challenges as designers face the task of building new experience types around these new possibilities.
Some of the key topics discussed focused around:
- Mobile web – How to face the challenge of disparate handset specs, smaller screen and distracted users? When is a pared down mobile version of the site the better choice, or can new high resolution handset allow users to easily use standard sites?
- Location awareness – This is a feature we expect to see a lot more of in the next twelve months, and how designers approach its implementation will be very interesting
There seemed to be a few points of disagreement amongst the audience, so as promised we’ve opened up this page to continue the discussion. Feel free to put your usability predictions in the comments area below. What trends in research and design do you think we will see emerging over the coming months?
Loved the BBQ and meeting everyone. Discussions around the mobile most interesting for mind. I really think 2010 will be exciting for mobile usability. Mobile web sites, web apps, native apps, all out in force. My suspicion is that we will hear a lot about the iPhone and Android phones in the same sentence. Both Apple and Google have a proud “user experience” focus, and now have an interesting platform for competing head to head. Developers of mobile enabled software play an integral role in this.
- Do you develop web based mobile interfaces?
- Or do you build native applications for the iPhone or Android? Or both?
Time will tell.