By Trent Mankelow
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We are often asked by clients for our opinion on the things they should watch out for, what the future holds, and who’s doing the really interesting stuff.
These kind of questions have inspired us to reflect, and collect our thoughts into four inter-related articles covering:

1. Devices
2. Social interactions
3. Services
4. Data

In this first part of a four part series, we are taking a look at some common attributes of the latest devices. By "device" I mean a physical gadget with some kind of electronic wizardry - a cellphone, MP3 player, remote control, camera - something that someone uses for a specific practical purpose.
I want to talk about four trends relating to devices:
 

• Mobile
• Location-aware
• Touch-enabled
• Context-aware

 
Mobile
The mobile phone is the primary connection tool for most people in the world. Already there are more mobile phones than computers.
This shift has some interesting social and cultural implications. For example, the 2002 book Smart Mobs suggests we are becoming looser about time and place. "If you have a phone you can be late…the opportunity to make decisions on the spot has made young people reluctant to divide their lives into time slots."
More and more organisations are creating new ways to connect with customers on-the-go. Kiwibank, ASB, National Bank, and others have iPhone-enabled sites or apps. A bank in the States is even letting customers deposit money by taking a photo of the cheque with their phone.
All of this makes sense - we don’t want to be tethered to our PCs. We want devices that are small, lightweight and portable. That’s why by the end of 2011 there will be more smartphones than PCs.

Q: People are doing more and more things "on the go" - what does this mean for your organisation?
 
Location-aware
Location-based services have been talked about since Y2K, but it has only been recently that we are starting to see devices that know where in the world they are.
For example, you can buy shoes with a built in GPS chip. This chip acts as a location beacon to help people find you (or your sneakers) and can also monitor heart rate, speed and body temperature.
Some new cameras know where you took a photo by automatically adding location data through GPS. You’ll never forget where a photo was taken ever again (especially handy if you are touring Europe and all the gothic buildings start to look the same).
Google Latitude tracks your location using your cellphone. Before you cry ‘Big Brother’, you need to give Google permission to know your whereabouts, and explicitly decide who to share that information with. I can easily imagine situations where this would come in handy: I’m in Sydney, Australia on business and get an alert that a friend is in town and is only three blocks away. I can see that my friend is stuck in traffic and is going to be late for tennis. You get the idea.

Q: Imagine if you knew the location of every one of your customers, in real-time. What could you do with that information? What location-based services could you offer?
 
Touch-enabled
When Pew asked an expert panel about future trends late last year, one of the things they agreed on most was that touch would increase as a common technology interface.
Gesture-based interfaces are definitely becoming more mainstream, thanks in large part to Apple’s family of products. (Although you have to agree with Seinfeld that there is a lack of satisfaction in swiping the iPhone when you’re angry).
Microsoft Surface and Sphere have shown us how large, multi-touch interfaces might actually be used, but we’re unlikely to see any Minority Report-style interactions anytime soon. Humans just weren’t designed to make small gestures in front of us. (Google "gorilla arm" for more on this).
Which brings us to an important point - designing touch-based interfaces isn’t like designing for the desktop. For a start, fingers are much fatter than mouse pointers and require larger buttons. One wonders if we are going to have to suffer though years of clumsy interactions, while designers catch up.

Q: In what way can your interfaces take advantage of gestures?
 
Context-aware
Devices are becoming more and more aware of the context in which they operate. They have sensors to measure all sorts of different things: motion, pressure, light, noise and even air quality and posture.
Accelerometers are one of the more popular sensors, and allow devices to detect movement and orientation. Using accelerometers some Nokia phones allow users to reject calls by turning them upside down, and some iPods offer a "shake to shuffle" capability.
Nintendo are about to release another add-on to the Wii console called a Vitality Sensor. It’s a fancy name for a simple idea - a sensor that checks your pulse. But think about the creative ways game designers could use it, like gauging when a horror game is too horrific, or when you aren’t working out hard enough when playing WiiFit.

Q: What innovative ways can you use sensors? Could you determine engagement by the way customers lean forward in their chair? What if customers could shake your interface like they can with the iPod?
 
Individually, each of these innovations is interesting and useful, but I think the true power is when we start to see devices with all of these attributes combined.
Some organisations have tried to peek into the future and imagine what life will be like with mobile, location-aware, touch-enabled and context-ware devices. Check out these videos from Microsoft and Nokia. (Thanks to LukeW for the links).
I don’t know what the future looks like but as more and more devices get smarter and smarter and the group of people who use them grows and grows, I am convinced that we ain’t seen nothing yet.
 
In the next article we’ll cover Part II: Social interactions.