consumer usability, Jakob Nielsen While many dotcommers focused on
novelty without any recourse to considering the consumer experience he
drove forth the science and the movement for useful design.
http://www.useit.com/jakob/
His website was exceptionally popular and his Alertbox column was the
source of great web wisdom.
http://www.useit.com/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
Rather than focus on fancy graphics and novel moving images he focused
on important aspects of web design related to utility. In my opinion he
wasn't enough of a firebrand but he was firm in his opinions and his
opinions lead the field. Today he's still leading the field and is now
moving his attention to the technologies involved in the Articulated
Naturality Web. His latest book is on eye tracking usability.
http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/
The augmented and Articulated fields are in a similar point in their
development to the internet pre-dotcom. People don't really know what to
do with the technology. Novelty rules the roost and utility takes a back
seat. This is beyond usability concerns alone. This is about the
application of technology. For example the AR business card simply
doesn't work for me. This was one of the big AR stories last year but it
feels short of utility. Two people standing in close proximity with a
smartphone have many ways to transfer their details across. Admittedly
this lacks the novelty factor of an animation in the ANW but there are
still options to provide that. A halfway house to a decent
implementation would be an AR marker generated on a person's smartphone
screen then the other user can recognise it using their phone. The
ultimate implementation is the AN profile access button hovering above
someone in the ANW or some other more elegant way to pass information
once assisted GPS sensors allow for accurate geolocation.
http://jamesalliban.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/ar-business-card/
There are noteworthy exceptions to the low utility AR applications that
the consumer is experiencing.
http://perspectives.3ds.com/virtualreality/augmented-reality-goes-postal/
Low utility can be a turn off to the consumer but not to early adopters.
Obviously the novelty factor is a big selling point but this wears off
and it's utility that rules. Consider Facebook or Google's success. I
remember a time before Google where the meta-search engine ruled the
roost but Google's high efficient ranking algorithm and distributed
processing architecture that allowed the algorithm to work with billions
of pages drove its success. AN is the future but it will take longer for
consumer buy-in unless there's a real everyday use.
Already our interaction with digital information is weak in real human
usability terms. The evolution to Human 2.0 and the Naturality aspect of
Articulated Naturality is all about this evolution to an organic
interface with digital information and survives. This is the brilliance
of Steve Chao's concept. In 2009 he struck on the ANW renaissance as
bringing forth a revolution in humankind and computer-human interaction.
We all have to conform to the interface of the machine. Keyboards. Mice.
2D monitors. It should be the other way round. Our machines should be
designed for us.
The AR marker is a stepping stone but it's a poor one. It still means we
have to conform to technology. It's inelegant and, at the moment, the
utility is low apart from marketing applications and the odd game.
Consumer utility and usability is paramount in the AN renaissance. It's
about the people becoming empowered by rather than be slaves to the
computer.
Does the consumer find it useful? This should be the question posed of
every AN application before it dares to take the moniker of a true
Articulated Naturality application.
Anything less can suck on my chocolate salty balls.
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