This year we tried to wrap in a few predictions from different departments including, user experience, strategy, and social. Beyond the general consensus that we will keep seeing a lot of the 2011 trends we predicted last year flow into 2012, we see some cool evolutions on the horizon for next year.
User Experience:
More natural
Started by the Nintendo Wii and taken up a notch with the XBoxKinect and Playstation Move, the use of your body movements and gestures to interact with content will steadily become more familiar.
Our own VP of UX was at this year’s Human Computer Interaction Conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre and participated on the team developing a standard definition for a "natural UI", a tougher challenge than you might think. He predicts that if Apple's hotly rumoured TV delivers on its promise to combine smart tech (Siri), gestural interface control, and great content, natural UI will be well on its path to mass adoption by year end.
Fewer “computers”
More tablets, more shared devices and seamless cloud sharing will start to render the desktop computers more and more obsolete.
All you will need is your window to the web. And that window will increasingly come in the form of a tablet.
The Game of Life
Kobo gamified reading, Fitocracy gamified your gym reps, the new TravelSmart Tracker will add a game layer to transit in Vancouver and of course there’s always Facebook pushing our motivational buttons. We see the trend towards gamification going strong in 2012. Our UX team predicts there’ll be some high profile failures in this area as well as firms jump on board and add features without proper strategy to support them. Games are not solely about points and badges, they’re about achievement, mastery, flow, being part of something bigger, and more. See here for more on gamification trends: http://blogs.forrester.com/tom_grant/11-03-16-serious_games_definitely_gameification_too_early_to_say)
Mono-pocket pants!
Why have all those pockets when you just need one device? Ok, we still have two hands, but the idea is that the iPhone 5, swiftly followed by Samsung, and Google phones will start to replace physical wallets by 2013. No more Constanza wallet!
The death of QR codes
We predict these unusable eyesores will be more commonly replaced by embedded tag reading smartphones (capable of NFC and reading cheap RFID chips) - by around the year end, with some high-profile campaigns grabbing headlines and the attention of the new adopters.
Strategy:
More stories, less commercials.
Companies are increasingly aware that features and benefits of products and services make dull content for consumers who continue to prefer the “why”, over the “what”. We predict companies will continue to invest in better content and content programing over time as a way to expose the true value of what they offer. See IBM’s recent story telling work for B2B products and services, http://ow.ly/875IB or the way The North Face inspires a lust for the outdoors with their “exploration” series: http://ow.ly/875Lk. Brands that understand the role their products and services play in people’s lives and can share it in a meaningful way will be telling more stories, with less commercials.
The rise of the App internet
With users spending more and more time in Applications rather than on the web, the rise of the App internet will become an evolving reality for marketers trying to reach eyeballs in 2012.
X-teams by next X-mas
This might take a while longer for an infrastructure capable of supporting decentralized/social business operation, but more social/self-organizing and lean project teams based around skillsets and networks will start to proliferate over the dated internally focused project teams we’ve seen in the past. Check this article out for more on X-teams: http://ow.ly/876Dc
Social:
Social Shopping
We expect to see online shopping go even more social. With recommendations, information search, evaluation, and payment all taking place on a social platform like Facebook. Check out www.beunick.com or Fundrazr.com who are both taking different approaches to social transactions. (fundrazr> is only for charities now but it is not a stretch to see it working well for retail in the future)
Twittervision
2011 saw some great integrations but we think this is the year we will start to see truly creative and impactful integration of the ‘social layer’ provided by Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc. into high profile traditional events. We will see less twitter buttons just sniped on a billboard and more and more creative ways of working social into traditional.
LBS digging in
Location Based Services like Foursquare and Gowalla are sort of floating in the ‘chasm’ between early adopters and the general population. We predict LBS to spend the year experimenting and trying to deliver more real world value to the user.
Leaders in info overload
Out of all the new applications helping us organize, sort, prioritize and generally avoid info overload (see: Zite, Flipboard, Google Currents & Flavors.me) we expect a leader to start to take shape. We might also start to see more commercialization of these applications (Ad placements or creative advertising opportunities) as the new mediums will reduce the efficacy of promoted tweets, Facebook ads, and other native platform advertising forms and force advertisers to reach further to get the eyeballs.
We’re looking forward to an amazing 2012 and are always keeping our eyes on the future. Let us know what you see on the digital horizon next year.
