2006 was the year when UGC and virals really came to the fore, created by a few and watched by many. This has since been absorbed into our routine understanding of the internet although the buzzword ‘viral’ does still continue to crop up. Definitely read ‘All Virals are Black Swans‘ by Jerome Courtial on Knitware for a quick reality check and then wade in on ‘Are Marketers hiding behind UGC?‘ asked out aloud by Martyn Perks on Netimperative.

2007 was the year of Social Networking, and social networking as we know it has not at all passed and probably won’t, but it will become more integrated into the finer parts of our day to day communications and interactions in the contexts of our personal lives, our businesses and our passions (politics, sports, gaming, fashion ..).

There will still be strong milage in social networks, as mobile platforms open up a new dimension with peer comms/interactions more available to us on the go, exposing us to valued and trusted opinion from friends or personalities of authority that will influence our decisions to buy, to participate in events, to socialise and influence how we benefit from these connections.

There is also strong milage in the 3D aspects of social networking, which has dipped below public media awareness for the time being (ref: Second Life et al), but will definitely re-emerge when technology catches up, delivering social networks in 3D through the web as a delivery network, established as a game/platform, but experienced with devices such as digital mirrors in our homes/bedrooms, goggles and in the coming years holographics. Holographics will also greatly expand the potential use of miniature mobile devices that will project displays onto surfaces and into 3D space. All of this continues to hold strong ties to social networking.

Specific mentions of MySpace, Facebook and their competition, most of these platforms are maturing into strong media partners that harvest eye-balls and personal data for the benefit of brands and businesses selling product. This is becoming the business model, but should never be confused with the reasons why people use the networks in the first place. They should tread with care and remember where they come from, or else they will most definitely be surpassed by new networks. It is easy to see the necessary lure of business success that is offered by entertainment brands, music labels and broadcasters who themselves are required to find new ways to get their product to paying consumers.

2007 was also the year of Social Network Apps, widgets and hacks. In many ways their visual identities have become clichéd with aqua-esk bubbling interfaces that call out for the user’s attention consistently, bearing a likeness to becoming unwanted and passé. App-spam is in part to blame (ref: Facebook) with close resemblance to email spam and pop-up alerts that are more appropriate to the nether realms of the darker internet. These apps essentially provide novel interfaces that act to display dynamic information feeds that are personal and of interest to a single user. Social network apps go farther to provide awareness of peers, their activities and interests and move to add depth to the experience of online social networking.

Here today
2008 is definitely a year of the mobile platform. We’re seeing the emergence of smartphones with touch screens beginning to surpass other traditional handheld phones and take the headlines. We keep these devices with us almost 24/7 along with our keys and money, and technology has now reached a point in delivering communications services, entertainment, business productivity and the internet through these miniature consoles and tailored all the time to us as a single user.

Apple has been taking most of the headlines, while the Google Android platform shows strong promise. Every other vendor is getting into this as well. An extremely significant change is in the way we use the devices, no longer just through a limited vendor locked interface, but rather more akin to the free-agent nature of our wireless, deskless personal computers, open to running any software we choose, fulfilling our needs on an almost limitless scale of applicability. Essential, its the emergence of the mobile device as an open platform for applications that will set it free. This is it’s year. Be sure to read what David Armano, VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass has to say on the subject.

A few Apple-esk thoughts for the day. The new OS X operating system is being delayed until October this year although the iPhone is still on track. Patents point to Apple integrating the iPhone in a much closer way to the whole Apple (so-called) media experience (sounds almost like Microsoft, but those are my words). They are making a strong point that the iPhone will be released on time (late June in the US), and its fair to say a lot rides on a successful delivery.

To be honest the iPhone does have an entire industry’s worth of competition from the completely copied Chinese phone, to other touch phones like LG-Prada, to the usual Blackberries and upcoming innovation from Nokia, Sony with coop ventures by Google, Yahoo! and many others. Some have commented that the iPhone is definitely not multi-touch, but rather two-touch. But even so, what Apple excels at is a “quality release that we and our customers expect from us” with added benefits of their loyal user base, free press coverage on everything, brick and mortar flagship stores, Steve Jobs, and so on. The iPhone will be pricey, it will also be premium, and lets not doubt it will go mainstream similar to what the iPod Nano is to the original iPod. Take a look at the latest offer from iRiver to challenge the Nano or perhaps you’d just settle on a Sony Walkman W880 like I did with upto 8GB.

Apple TV is another extremely interesting platform. Granted competition here is equally bullish. Apple is late to the game, and they’re really testing waters with the current release and allowing a wide range of hacks to play with what they have made, adding features like RSS, games, breaking the iTunes DRM, working with Slingshot and so on. A common theme between the iPhone and Apple TV is that they both run modified versions of OS X – and thats pretty powerful. Sure Microsoft does this, but they get in your head by publicizing their wide range of novel OS titles, rather than just getting on with the job and making it work, most of the time mis-identifying their home-user customers as being their own developers. Pardon the slag on their employment of over 61,500 staff worldwide – high in talent, low on clear vision that spearheads innovation. I’d rather be at Google.

What I’d really like to make clear is while the world is oohing over the iPhone, I’m pretty sure that it will become integrated in a way that is much closer than any of us perceive today. Where the iPod has driven wider awareness and adoption of the already sleek and effective Apple Mac range of computers amongst home users and consumers of a wide scale, the iPhone will probably play a similar role especially within the business world, currently in bed with the Blackberry phone and its Windows counterparts.

In the meantime the iPod earlier this week overtook Sony’s original Walkman, Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Gameboy as the product with the highest sales over the shortest time, selling their 100 millionth iPod in just five and a half years. Apple’s stock is still hanging around $92, with one analyst pricing them at $200 per share, and if you have some spare cash, I still see it as a big opportunity for some longer term returns on investment.

The year beganwith announcements from Apple for their iPhone garnering the usual following and press coverage along with numerous unveilings from every other corner of the tech industry. In fact according to the Keller Fay Group and Nielson BuzzMetrics, the Apple iPhone was mentioned up to nine times for every mention of George Bush across the internet for over ten days following its announcement.

Today the planet is literally covered with screen devices from the very visible and common home screens – TVs, plasmas, computer LCDs; to screens on-the-go – phones, ipods, psps, portable video players, screens on trains, planes and cars; as well as display advertising everywhere – shops, stations, stadiums, outdoor. We can’t escape them and most of us spend the larger part of our lives using them. Designing interfaces for screen devices that appear almost anywhere, fulfilling numerous purposes at the same time provides an almost universal and growing need for increasingly simple and natural ways of interaction that are forgiving and accommodating of anyone who may use them, in anyway they want.

Just getting past the post-New Year’s slumber, Lorenzo spotted LG’s Prada touch screen phone, ready to ship with an interface modeled in Flash. Late last year Elmer previewed a similar Flash menu running on his own Nokia. Designing interfaces with Flash for handheld devices will take us out of the dark ages in on-screen interfaces, historically – just image buttons changing state and calling up lists of further actions. Flash gives designers control over interfaces that offer the user flow and natural organic transitions between states. It puts the design back with the designers and liberates us from stuttering screen interfaces that have been co-opted by hardware limitations and telecom companies (who still don’t get the internet).

Last week I was invited to deliver a course titled ‘Design for Screen’ at the University of Westminster’s ‘BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Practice’ degree program in Harrow. Lecturing over two days to second-year students, we began with a morning of how to gatecrash a job in the industry, playing to our strengths and being passionate about what we love in our work, my own journey from uni to Holler, as well as showcasing some key Holler projects and a sneak peak at some new stuff, not yet seen. We swim within a diverse industry delivering communications and media to every segment of the world. Even an equally diverse body of students made up of film makers, writers, illustrators, and media designers who are rooted within the practice of developing well founded concept and evolving thought process, are not made fully aware of the scale and scope that their talent applies to, and thats exciting.

Design for screen is in itself just as diverse. During the first workshop the students were given sheets of paper and asked to fold them down to size appropriate to the screen they would design. Working in small groups they discussed the how, where and who of each device and put to paper designs that ranged from interactive DVR cinema, exhibit consoles and children’s bubbly touch-screen TV to a pictographic-mobile interface, immersive goggles and a dreamcatcher concept of a ceiling mounted touch-screen device to capture and categorize the quickly disappearing fragments of last night’s dream. I was generally impressed with the unanimous adoption of touch-screen interfaces throughout, but even more so with their embrace of simple finger point-and-drag interactions and the ease with which they took it for granted. And rightly so.

The students really brought it home as they naturally made intuitive choices in how we interact with screens, relate and experience them. They demonstrated scalable design ideas with simple transparent navigation. Day two and we were taking our paper-based designs to the screen. I delivered a basic Photoshop masterclass – preparing our digital canvas and covering technical basics that would allow us to get on with the creative design. The students were given the chance to present their work, field any questions or insights and above all, get a real good feeling for the industry they will become a part of: a media golden age passing just beneath our finger tips.

If you are a designer studying today, there is no doubt that you will graduate into the humble dawn of universal, simple and tangible touch screen interfaces (verbal interaction included of course). We talk of convergence and ubiquitous connections between all devices through any medium, but the real experience will connect with the user only through a fundamental rebirth of the interface. We’ve all seen the stunning TED talks multi-touch screen presentation of February 2006, and perhaps you’ve also followed Prada’s Magic Mirror of a few years ago in New York. And what of HP’s ‘Making the computer personal again‘ TV ads or more recently (January 18th) – Nokia’s quietly released concept films titled ‘A view to the future‘. The last two are pure gold.

Let’s think natural, non-intrusive and extremely responsive intelligent design. Multi-touch has enormous potential and along with voice interaction will revolutionize and simplify the way we do almost anything. Its essentially back to the basics, and thats a good thing for all users. Today we use back-lit displays, electronic paper is not far off, and 3D holographics may soon emerge out of deep-end development and into our own day-to-day lives.