It's an old cliche that technology innovation thrives in times of recession. But we think this will actually be true for user experience and application design in 2009. We expect to see both incremental enhancements as businesses re-focus on the bottom line, as well as truly mind-boggling innovation.
So for this post I want to offer some predictions where the user experience market is headed. As with our 2008 retrospective, I've asked several Catalyst Resources staff members to contribute their thoughts. We hope it is a provocative and inspiring read.
Brad - Social media architect
Mobile and SaaS - There will be a dramatic intersection between mobile apps and SaaS/Cloud Computing. It started with the iPhone, but it will accelerate in 2009 as more mobile devices (especially Android-based and perhaps Palm Nova-based) adopt touch interfaces, rich client software and powerful internal processors, combined with internet-delivered services. A good example of this accelerating trend is the just-announced Cisco WebEx for iPhone.- Location Intelligence - Location technology becomes a commodity (i.e. GPS/geolocation is essentially universal in handheld devices and browsers) and is incorporated as a standard component of SaaS applications. Expect to see everything from geo-referenced mapping, to data mashups to, business intelligence using spatial data processing.
- Browser reigns king - Browser based web application performance (i.e. AJAX typically with WebKit rendering) gets as fast as desktop performance. Google's Chrome, Apple's SproutCore, FireFox's Spidermonkey and projects like IBM's Blue Spruce all point the way to high performance that is also open source, requires no installs, and is search engine friendly. This will definitely challenge Flex and Silverlight.
- Voice interfaces - Voice recognition will become more prevalent and accepted as a mainstream UI. Google Mobile is just the start.
- Health care apps - Health applications begin to take off but because they are so complex and intertwined, they require a specialized breed of enterprise user experience design. The move to online will be incremental pieces, rather than comprehensive application design. But if the UI is built as components, a full shift to online will be quick to implement later on down the road.
- SaaS partnerships - SaaS infrastructure vendors will form more strategic partnerships with firms that can supplement their services through usability and user experience design, visual design, social networking, regulatory consulting, and Rich Internet Application coding.
- Regulatory compliance - Post 2008 financial meltdown, there will be an increased focus on regulatory-compliance and governance. Application designers will need to offer componetized UI that specifically supports regulatory compliance through standardization across applications. SaaS will be particularly attractive for this reason.
- Risk mitigation - Companies will place more emphasis on identifying the levels of risk associated with application design and SaaS services. To mitigate risk, buyers will demand that they see not just design comps and proofs-of-concepts but also working examples of enterprise-level work before they make final decisions.
- Flexible displays - Long shot prediction: Affordable, flexible displays with E-ink will begin coming to market and change the way we interact with smartphones, notebook computers, e-newspapers and electronic documents.
Gilroy - Ux designer
- SaaS and Cloud Computing - The economic downturn will encourage more businesses to explore the cloud computing model, proliferating SaaS and cloud devices (think less capital, re-usable source data, instantaneous distribution, remote collaboration, & global access). Efficient SaaS design will help companies and consumers save money and/or work more efficiently.
- Multi-touch - A combination of Microsoft's surface computing and Sony's flexible TFT OLED displays will put multi-touch interaction on all manner of devices and form factors.
Lulu - UI designer
- Touch interfaces -Touch is going to be the next big thing in interaction design and not limited to phones and kiosks. It will move to the forefront as companies look to develop one code base that can be pushed out to multiple device types.
Mobile app proliferation - Since there are more cellphones and smartphones being sold than laptops and desktop computers, expect to see a lot more mobile apps. All of the signficant smartphone vendors from Apple (App Store currently with over 300 million app downloads), to Google (Android Market), to Rim (Blackberry Application Center) to Microsoft (Windows Mobile Applications) will provide mobile apps through their own stores. There will be a tremendous opportunity to design and develop applications for the enterprise, workgroups and individual users.
Regis - Interaction architect
- RIAs and new forms of input - RIA technologies will continue maturing to truly allow desktop like interactions for online applications. This will in turn support the migration of even more traditional software to the SaaS model. User experience designers will have to keep up with that trend and free themselves from the old metaphors they had to think through for the past decades. They will have to integrate new interaction models into their toolboxes and make sure, more than ever, that gesture-based interactions, 3D metaphors, motion sensing and other UX innovations do not shatter the fragile union between users and technology.
Jessica - UI architect
- Android - Not only is the mobile device and application market going to expand, but Android, Google's open source platform for mobile development will give Apple's platform a serious run for its money, though Apple will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.
- SaaS and more SaaS - Because of the economic situation we'll see a higher number of SaaS business models because companies have less capital they're willing to invest up front. While SaaS isn't the holy grail to all business challenges, implementing it in key areas will help curb unnecessary expenses. Consequently new and more involved SaaS models will emerge as the dominant form of software licensing. This will mean more interesting, and complex opportunities for SaaS application design firms.
Paul - Managing partner
- Mobile is the trend - The hand-held smartphone will be where people spend more and more time for business and pleasure. It will become the primary information and entertainment device, especially among young users.
- SaaS growth - The economic climate will force enterprises who have been on the fence, to finally embrace some form of SaaS in order to cut costs, be more efficient and deliver business-relevant innovation. Expect this to translate to companies implementing SaaS not just for their core application, but for the entire customer management lifecycle. The SaaS application will offer everything from trial, to sales, to provisioning, to support, to social marketing.
- SaaS design as strategic - Customers will continue to view SaaS application design firms as extensions of their internal teams and will increasingly look to them more as one-stop strategic consulting services, rather than just creating a front-end experience.
- RIAs and SaaS - RIA technology will continue to evolve and improve to provide the essential functionality and sophistication necessary to design and deliver enterprise SaaS.
- Business learns from consumer market - There will become a growing blur between what is seen in business and consumer software. It will be driven by business users who expect the same ease-of-use, performance, and functionality that they find in the consumer web applications they use at home.
Some would argue that attempting to predict where a market is headed is a risky proposition. But regardless of the exact accuracy of any of the above predictions, for Catalyst Resources, with over 15 years in user experience design, we can confidently predict that 2009 will be an exciting and innovative time.
If you would like to share your own Ux predictions for 2009, please comment and let us know your thoughts.
Categories: User Experience