The New Experience: Adaptive eXperience (AX) (2021)
New Year, New Challenges for 2021
📅 2020.12.29 - 👤 Borbély Viktor
The past year 2020 gave us numerous new applications that we had to learn. There were those that appeared from nowhere. Others disappeared and dropped out of daily use as losers. The numerous new interfaces taught us to adapt, to learn something new daily. To immerse ourselves in the digital world. Even those who previously recoiled from smart devices. Can Adaptive experience help with this?
The past 10-15 years brought catchy names when smart screens appeared one after another. Designers had to create interfaces that are intuitive. We owe a lot to Apple in this field, where good usability has always been important. Today their guidelines are considered standard. We can safely rely on their visual display systems. They experimented a lot with the cognitive effects of colors, shapes, and movements to provide a perfect experience.
We learned concepts like UX (User Experience), CX (Customer Experience), all of which served to make the user more part of a product and have the product serve their needs. In the simplest way possible. This goes back much earlier, to the period of World War II.
In the 1930s, Vannevar Bush came up with the “memex” idea, which was essentially a vision of a personal library (storage). However, after his 1945 publication, he quickly recognized that the human mind would have difficulty coping with the incredible amount of data available. Throughout his life, he worked on creating the most natural harmony and cooperation between man and machine. One such consequence was the mouse.
What is Adaptive experience?
Product and interface designers spend many thousands of work hours making it user-friendly and lovable for future users. Software is advantaged compared to their physical counterparts, as they are relatively easy to modify. A good example of personalization in physical products is when, for example, we can choose the color of a car. The upholstery. What extras should be in our car. We can feel we have a say. We can make it somewhat unique. We even pay extra for this. So there is demand for customizability.
In the field of software, this is somewhat easier. Our Google search learns our topics and places them higher in the results list. We get articles that match our interests. We can set the background color of our chat application. These are barely noticeable details, but they still personalize our needs.
The less visible trend is that I could customize an application’s interface to my own needs. We already have to interact with so many interfaces. Just for conversation, there are 5-6 that I use myself. Calendars. Image editors, etc.
Will the time come when I can put the functions that interest me on one interface and hide the rest? Switching between applications, can I find my favorite function in the same place, which I access from the same place in every application? Can I move the icons? Can I arrange my list of acquaintances myself to see what I want?
These contradict the designers’ plans to create a unique interface. Yet the function should be recognizable and unambiguous.
The function-oriented approach
Further dissecting the Adaptive experience question, the purpose of such innovation must be examined. What does this add to the experience? Does it simplify? Does it make anything easier? Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality is specifically such an area.
Is there demand for a device where all chat applications are connected? I don’t necessarily want to specify which one I use to reach my acquaintance, just that I send them a message. Can it be sent on the most relevant channel based on some criteria?
Or for example, editing my images. Every app is a bit unique, each is strong in something different. Can I use these functions so that it summarizes settings from all installed apps on one interface? Whether which one can put funny glasses on or change the background is not essential. Let one of them do it for me.
Whether such thinking will start, I don’t know. However, the year 2021 will hold further challenges for us on how we will be able to navigate easily immersed in the virtual world. It’s not just about the twenty-something age group. We must also think about the other end of the age spectrum. The goal should not be alienation but their increasingly better involvement. There is a W3C recommendation for this, which will be worth following more closely during 2021 and implementing, as we can win new users through it.