Resource Wired retold Robert Brunner’s ideas expressed by him at one of the latest design conferences. This is about the design that comes after smartphones. They say Brunner saw the future of smartphones is long before anyone else. Or at least least the promise of such a future. Being the founder of the team Apple’s industrial design in the 90s, he oversaw the development of Newton – one of the first products that magically tried fit all the equipment in your pocket.
A photo from open sources
As it turned out, Newton was not an omnipotent device (or even a device that “can do anything”). But he provided the basis for multifunctional smartphones, which today lies in each of us in your pocket. Newton just picked the future consolidated functionality and ubiquitous network connectivity.
Today, these ideas have become reality. And yet Brunner was tired again from all this dominance of pocket screens. Being the founder Ammunition, the designer home in charge of products such as Beats by Dre and Nook by Barnes and Noble, designer focused on creating products that find more sophisticated paths to our hearts.
According to Brunner, it is important to answer the following question. Today smartphones can do everything, but how much of that they do well? To encourage us to find the answer to this question, Brunner outlined several ideas about what design can become in the coming years.
Smart specific tools
When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, he boasted that fit three devices into one: iPod, cell phone and internet communicator. Then we know what happened. In smartphones included not only phones and MP3 players, but also cameras, gaming systems, GPS navigators and more.
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But when you pack all this functionality into one device, something is lost. “To gain versatility, you losing specific tools, “says Brunner.
One of those attributes that we have lost with sensory screens, is simple tactility. It doesn’t matter if the smartphone can to do everything, you have to do it on a glass screen, and very often this translates into a compromise. Remember how much more naturally click the shutter of the camera by pressing the plastic button, rather than trying to comfortably take your smartphone and click on touch button “take a picture”. And yes, every self-respecting a gamer would rather choose a console than a smartphone (yes and no there nothing).
Brunner misses these simple tactile charms: the giver hope and a camera shutter; soundly volume control weighty argument in the form of a hammer in his hand. By for these reasons, the designer wants to return to simple single-purpose tools.
To illustrate the idea, he created the concept of smart metering. roulettes.
“There are tons of things that I like about analogue measuring tape, “he says.” You see something big and you see how it would be two inches smaller. “However, a lot Depends on your eyes and the brain that counts. Brunner suggested improve roulette so that it can capture your measurements in three-dimensional space and send them back to your computer. it a combination of time-tested technology and high-tech elements.
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Smartphones and tablets have become a great training ground for all of these. technologies – sensors that allow devices navigate in space, wireless radios, which send information to devices, and much more, however Brunner believes the next step will be to include all of this in form factors already familiar to us. “It’s a kind of hesitation the pendulum, “he says.” When you are at one end, you are far from another. ”
New categories require new interactions
If anyone can confidently talk about the growing importance of wearables computers, so this is Brunner. His studio is made by Beats by headphones Dre, and those have become one of the most powerful consumer brands in electronics over the past five years. However, the designer believes that in future designers need not try to pack everything in the era smartphones, and invent new types of interaction.
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To roughly imagine what it might look like, Brunner and his team created the concept of a wearable device with some unique input and output options. From point of view device control (in this case, a bracelet), ring sensors on the inside of the strip fixes the position of the tendons in the carrier’s hand, giving some freedom to control purely physical gestures. As for the display, instead of to narrow the screen of the smartphone to the size of the dial, Brunner and company put a flexible display on a leather strap, making from the device stylish strap with a screen.
A large screen was born as a result of experiments with existing smart watches that are trying to squeeze notifications in a miniature display. “I have literally to my nose bring this watch. Usually you look from a distance of half a meter. ” The lesson is simple: for the success of smart watches, designers need to see in the watch smartphone.
Take people back to the real world
Another problem that Brunner sees in our ubiquitous Pocket screens – this is how they addict. Literally for smartphones have developed several years of living in our pockets reflex. “I can’t focus on my children for 30 or 45 minutes without looking at this device, “complains Brunner. – “There is a certain attention deficit that haunts us through life. ”
Brunner believes the time has come for designers to take over responsibility and mitigate this useless addiction. With one parties, it’s just a matter of simplifying and rationalizing the quantity data that our applications supply. Brunner encourages designers and developers “focus, not try to fit as much information as there is at all. ” interfaces and software like Google Now – step into direction of this. It promises us a world to enter, go out and return to your former life. People are completely lost in their devices, and it’s scary.
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However, there are opportunities for other types of interaction. Ammunition designed a special case for the iPhone, which provides only a piece of the screen, which allows the user focus on one thing instead of completely drown in the device. There is also software that blocks sites on whom you lose time, or don’t even lose, but spend more, than they could. In the end, you can just use necessary sites for work.
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Of course, the problem is today’s digital economy: attention – This is money. Those who sell services want you looked at them all the time. This is their main goal.
All these ideas share a common focus. They suggest that the pendulum will swing away from the mentality of the Swiss knife in the era smartphones. “I think there is a narrowing,” says Brunner, under contraction implying functionality. Fifty years ago, an idea that you can carry a phone, player and Internet communicator in one device was incredible in itself. Today the problem is that no one knows how to make the best phone, the best MP3 player and best internet communicator. Consolidation trend may seem inevitable, but the denouement is not impossible. Remember: e-books have not lost popularity after the boom tablets.
Time Life Smartphones
