2010 the year with new focus and service attitude
It is a tradition on my blog to give some predictions on the coming year. See these for 2009 and 2008 (both in Dutch). I will not look back in detail to see if the predictions came true, in the end it is more a residu of my thinking of that moment, than a serious hitting for the trends to come true. Broader trends are more interesting than one hot wonders, in my opinion, and I’m glad that the predictions of the last two year has started and/or are still developing. As I said last year: the short term developments are always slower, but looking back in a couple of years we will be surprised by the changes.
This said, I will share some thoughts for the coming year; I think this will be a year as a start of a new focus and service attitude.
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The end of SEO with an evolution to semantic search
In this post by Robert Scoble, he coined some interesting thoughts ont the developments of SEO and SEM. I especially found the ideas on the evolution of search engines like Google and Bing to search results that are relevant by heart and not by design interesting. It is an evolution to a semantic web in another way than mostly is promoted.
Most of the time the idea of the semantic web is linked to a better understanding of the question, of a smart determination of the question. Do you look for a bank to collect money, or to sit on. In the example of Scoble the semantic part is found in the search results itself. What results do really fit, apart from any influencing designing elements. It may look like just another accent but it is a world of difference.
So this will mean that the current services for search will evolve to semantic systems. Fed by the conversational realtime search and cloud based sensors to the real relevance. Services like Twine will be obsolete. We won’t call them semantic by the way, they are just intuitive and authentic.
Is SEO therefor also obsolete. Not completely. It will stay for some time, and it will be more and more a hygienic factor. A basic requirement you cannot avoid. It is just like the development of usability. Usability is not the discriminator, the experience and persuasion aspects of an interface are. SEO will be part of the basic toolset. The real behavior makes the difference.
Touching the senses at This Happened #4
This night I did attend This Happened for the fourth time. It was a great night again. Kars, Ianus and Alexander managed to mix up a fine program with different points of views on interaction design. And just like the other editions you can experience an emerging theme I think. I borrow this from the first talk of Janneke Sluijs: embodied embedded cognition can be coined as the binding theme.
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Waved notes on Design by Fire
Today I attended the Design by Fire conference. For me it was the first time, I heard a lot of good stories from last years edition and always like to see Matt Jones of course. It was a pleasant day with nice people and some good talks. Where especially Matt Jones delivers to my expectations with a great talk on the element of time in good experience design.
During the conference I also did an interesting experiment in taking the notes using Google Wave together with Taco Ekkel. For me it was the real first functional use of Wave, and it surely was promising. And it connects wonderful with the leading theme of the day for me; designing for real-timing experiences.
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Thinking in the box
Right. Today I ran into this example of a concept of Living Magazines. I agree on the vision in the post that this is not likely to happen fast. But I even think it is not likely to happen at all in this way. It is another example of ‘thinking in the box’. Try to connect new technologies to current concepts.
You can watch the movie here below. They create very expensive video material to use as moving photography in their living magazine. It has to be sad the execution is great and it look cool. But the whole distribution concept is unlikely.
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Twitter in a singularity ecosystem
This weekend there was an interesting conference in New York on the concept of singularity. I did not attend the conference, but read some reports on it. The whole idea of singularity, where the power of computer intelligence is heading up or even overtaking our own intelligence, is something I think is surely a trend that can emerge. In a way it is here already as conversational tools like Twitter will take a stronger role to connect all parts of the ecosystem we live in.
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Can Layar become an on-the-road-search tool?
You all know Layar of course, it can’t be missed. The new tool made by SPRX Mobile is as the say themselves ‘the first mobile augmented reality browser’. Next week there will be a first devcamp with Bruce Sterling setting the context. And that is interesting because I think the approach of Layar is showing different models for a new emerging augmented world.
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Return of the flashmob as driver closed grouping
Today we had a flashmob hype in Amsterdam. The successful Stockholm Michael Jackson contributing flashmob was the inspiration for this event. However the flashmob generated lots of attention and a lot of people had a great day in preparation and executing, the flashmob failed in my opinion. The basic idea of a flashmob is to surprise a ignorant crowd by a orchestrated action done by a view. This one was the opposite. But unless the failure it could be seen as a driver for some interesting trends. Some thoughts…
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The next ubiquitous services
In an article of Winston Ross which he wrote for Newsweek (but wasn’t published) I found some interesting teasing quotes. The article itself asks the question what the next Twitter will be. That is a question that is often asked, but in essence not relevant. What is interesting however, is one of the subquestions that emerges: which are the services that will be unmissable, that will be part of our daily routine and become ubiquitous.
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