Tablet Computers, Surface and the future

192 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes and 28 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

Well the tablets are coming think and thin. Its hard to imagine that the iPad was only launched back on the 27th Jan 2010 and since then we had the iPad 2 March this year. The iPad brought a lot of innovation since the tablets of old, but where is it going now? At the moment people would have to be wondering if the innovation has stopped and all we are going to see is the law suites over who had what first and owns the rights. :(

Well some companies are not just sitting around and to see some of the work that has come out in the area of Ultra-Notebooks, ie ASUS Ultra-notebook and Dell's Ultra with Optical Drive and Samsung Launches a Series 7 Chronos Notebook. These are quite exciting and quite powerfull devices. But the question is how much longer will these types of devices be around?

Samsung Series 7 CHRONOS Notebook

ASUS Ultrabook UX21

Mac Air

Dell XPS 14z Notebook

The other day I came across some more interesting video's produced by Microsoft in the area of surface technology. In many ways all these new tablet and smart phone devices are becoming thinner and more intergrated into our everyday lives. The video from Microsoft shows some of the direction where this is going and that the phone will be come more and more an everyday device with respect to communications, ticket, wallet and media communications device.

What is shows is that the technology will become more transparent. Yes physically as well as the product itself with respect to what it is to what does it do. More and more we are seeing people and their interactions with the technology become more intuitive. The technology is starting to fad and the functionality is all that is important. For our generation we will talk about the bits and bytes and what the underpinning technolgy is. But for our children and their children it will be a topic of the past.

My best example is with my own daughter. She has Down Syndrome but that does not stop her from engaging in the use of technology. Her school issued all the kids in her class for the last three years with MAC notebooks. Being a longtime PC user it has been foreign to me. But I see my daughter doing thing with that laptop that I have know idea how she has done it. She obiously learnt things at school, but she customises the user interface and how she works with it from her own knowledge to the extent that her school IT department are struggling to manage the device. :) (Smart Girl)

Our Smart Kids

More and more our exposure and experience with technology will be form an experiece perspective and the underlying technology will be a minor concern. People are more interested in what experience they can have with the technology. It either performs and is purchase or not, bring on the future

The Future is Here!

Time moves on

196 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 11 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

Time keeps moving

Its always intresting to see how time seems to be slow when you are waiting, and then you get going and time seems to spead up. I started blogging about my trip at the 294 days point as so I am about to trip over the first 100 days. In that time I have secured my locations of where I am going and a number of good contacts to visit and talk with. That exercise is still progressing and become more interesting each day as I discover other opportunities.

My next milestone comes from my army days when we counted down from 100 days. That was during my time at the Army Apprentice School of Music. That point was referred to as "Crab Night" and we would go all around town painting pictures of a crab with a number in it which would represent our years intake. Mine at that time was 29th, the goal was to get the image in the most unusal spot. We I won't be doing that but maybe put one up on this blog at the 100 day point, which will be  the 1st Feb 2012.

As time moves on I am becoming more focused on what it is I hope to achieve. I have now brought it down to looking at the issue of interface design and usability from four angles. They are:

1. The user perspective: How they learn? What is good and bad in usability? What indicates to a user good usability?
2. The Developer: How does a developer consider usability? What are they trying to achieve? Is usability a consideration within the process of usability? Are they able to separate their passion to develop and take a user perspective in their work?
3. Manufacturers: How do they address this issue in their design? Is this a marketing issue or and engineering issue? Who defines the direction with usability? How is this defined?
4. Business: How do we re-engage business to be involved with the conversation of usability at the start of a project? Does business see a need or value? Why has business advocated this responsibility? Have they or is it a matter of an inability to communicate their needs? What can we do to engage and show the value to a business in being involved at the start and not complaining at the end?

These are my focus and I dare say I will not find all the answers but at lease I will be able to start the conversation towards a better user centric approach to the use of technology in general and specifically to mobile technology.

The other question which is highlighted with a recent patent awarded to Apple is should functional design beable to be patented? will this become an inhibitor to innovation? Many of the things we use today are built on the past.

A simple example is the mouse. Invented Dr Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute.

Dr Douglas Engelbart and the first mouse

Future Design Mouse

Imagine if that was patented to the extent that it stopped anyone from building and improving on it. These two mouse are basically the same. They plot on a flat screen the X ,Y coordinates of a cursor to a person to engage programs on a screen.

The other area is tablet computers and boy have they come a longway.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Star Trek the Original

Star Trek Next Generation

There is Kirk way back in about 1966-67 using a tablet computer with a pen device. Then Picard on Next Generation using quite a thin tablet. All well before the release of some of todays computer companies offering in this space. Admitidly they are only props but I dare say they were the seeds to some of the ideas that are presented today.

Where will it go, well you only need to look at movies like the Minority Report and Avitar. Then look at what Corning are doing. A good example can be seen on youtube, a video called the Day Made in Glass. Another good video is Microsoft's Surface 2 technology this is the future and it is on the door step of tomorrow. Only last year at CES Samsung display their Amoled transparent display technology.

To take it to the n'th degree check out the Mozilla Seabird Concept Phone. This is a concept but all of the technology is available today. So it is just a mater of time.

Transparent displays and devices that are aware of other devices to then transfer content. Recently a number of companies have released the bump technology to transfer between devices and MIT presented their research on transparent batteries so lots are on their way. Let hope this line of patent wars will not slow down innovation to see the world from one perspective. Its interesting to see the history of companies and where they have come from. The battles againt big corporates while they were small and the things they did to get where they are now, and to see that they are now the big corporates defending themselves and battling the small startup of the future. As they always say what comes around goes around.

Clarification of how I will approach the topic

211 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes and 44 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

The more I think of my topic the more I spend considering how I should approach the topic and get the most of the trip. In my previous blog I considered the questions I am looking to address, but as I read more I am starting to realise the approach and thought process will have a bearing on the outcomes.

The thinker

I have been reading an article which was written by Tim Brown of IDEO. The article itself can be found at Design Thinking . 


One of the key pieces of information I got from this article was the definition of design think that was put simply, 


"It is a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity."


But the main idea behind design thinking is that it is a "methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centred design ethos."  I really believe that we have to focus on the human-centred aspect but to do that there is an engagement process that has to be addressed. 


Technology has to accept that whatever is designed it needs to be human-centred, but the other side of the debate is how do we engage the human side to own and get involved. Life was to become easier with all the new technology but it has not. It has become more complex and to many people frustrating. As Steve Jobs once quoted: "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."


I believe many forget that and that is one of the main points I am hoping to better understand. How do we go about better design with the respect to the use of this technology. How can we design to empower rather than dis-empower the end user. 


Business and users know what works for them, they have been trailing and testing it for years. So how do we design those proven and tested processes so that we can get the efficiencies of the technology without reinventing proven processes which only need to be more efficiently expressed in the technology so that the technology becomes transparent.


The best example of transparent technology is watching owners of iPad's and a lot of apple products. If you engage them in a conversation about what they are doing you will hear about all the creative products that they produce and the enjoyment they get at producing it. Very rarely if ever with they talk about the technology.