Movement
Images, clockwise from top left: BUGmodules by BugLabs; Apple iPhone; the Arduino board available at tinker.it; Football ScoreCast by Ambient; Chumby from Chumby Industries.
That said, just as we finally understand what the Web is, it’s making another transformation.
The Web and the physical world are leaking into one another, in two ways.
First, physical products are now connected to the network. The widgets concept turns out to be a great way to port the Web to devices in the home, and there are products that make it as easy to hack with gadgets as it is to open Notepad and starting writing HTML. Super simple. The Web is getting inside objects in large and small ways.
These physical devices are undergoing a revolution of their own, in terms of interface, but I’m not even going to get into that.
Second, the importance of groups and social software and overall experience – something we’re pretty good at on the Web – is being acknowledged by product and technology companies, as part of a larger movement called “service design.”
But the thing is:
How do cities or tools help me design better a radio which tells me what my friends are listening to?
How do cities or tools help me design better a invite-a-friend interaction on a mobile phone service?
They don’t.
Arcologies and waldos are not suitable metaphors for this emerging use of the Web.
So what I want to talk about now is a third metaphor that I’ve found useful in designing these kind of products, and other Web products and services for clients.
This approach is where the title of this talk, Movement, comes from, and is based on two observations.