Is the browser dying? Is user interface dying? Long live user experience.

I haven’t use my browser for almost a week…yes. I cannot believe it is happening, and it’s happening so fast – people spend less and less time with their browser right now. And as an user experience designer I’d like to say, this fact reflects a change of Internet lifestyle. This is pretty significant in computer history because it announces the death of Matrix, and probably, the death of user interface. It is scary and exciting because people soon need to redefine user experience and the job function of UX designers: We will soon design things without thinking about screens. We will think about creating better service. We will become business designers. Or we will become entrepreneur consultants.

It happened almost like overnight since Apple proudly introduce their iPhone and iPad, followed by a series of other fancy smart phones and mini computer-like devices. People are busy tracking apps instead of browser from the second they wake up in the morning to late night sex time. They are smart enough to realize what they really need is to get rid of all the user interfaces and get to know their best friends’ status, bank balances and next job oppotunites. Now since they can accomplish these tasks without a computer. Sooner or later there’ll be some other vitural devices or service to help them get rid of their smart phones, such as built-in-body-chips or visual augmented sun glasses.

People’s life are simplified. The world will be more visual and more real since we’ll not gonna deal with interfaces but down-to earth UI-free services.

Or is it what we really want? How about system design?

As a hot nerdy girl I both love and hate about system design – it’s  like a sophisticated and but usually over-dressed woman – although we really just want to see the naked body inside, the process to get there could be fancinating and addictive – it has some ritual values. If we don’t design it well, it will turn from a hotty blonde to your mother – who yells at you and makes you want to kill yourself.

So there I come and say, long live user experience, the browser may die some day, smart phone will die some day, but there’s always people issues that require us to solve – we UX designers will seek our ways to thrive and make better services. As long as there’s people, there’s user experience.

Advertisement

Posted in: Interaction Design