Bean Blog

Ready to change the way you do everything? Well, the changes are probably already hiding in plain sight in your living room or pocket.

I am just back from my first Dust or Magic – the annual children’s new media design institute put on by the brainiacs at Children’s Technology Review (mention this blog and receive 0% off your next subscription!!). Lots of cool stuff to see, interesting people and conversation, a nice refresher on the way we approach many projects we work on in kid media, and a look ahead to what’s next.

2010 is sizing up to be a year of seismic change. Thinking of how the Wii system offered gesture-based control and the iPhone introduced us to the widespread use of multi-touch interfaces, we are now entering a period where things could change really fast. But it isn’t just the worlds of gaming or mobile that have been affected. What does the future hold? Well, that’s always impossible to tell, but take the examples of my two daughers (5.5yo and 3.5yo). They have been exposed to iPhone and Wii. The genie is out of the bottle for them — they will grow up expecting nothing less than this level of control.

While this won’t happen next year, I think the desktop — with all its various clutter — is in serious trouble. Think how quickly everyone wanted to dump that bulky CRT monitor for a nice thin LCD. Next it will be large-format multi-touch tablets. Lay them on the desk to write or scribble on, tilt them up for reading, turn them around to show someone your work, take them downstairs for a meeting. Of course, tablets have been around for a while, but it is the convergence of intuitive multi-touch interfaces, accelerometers to gauge viewing angles, easy mobile connectivity, longer battery life and massive storage. Even if you think about one of the drawbacks of touchscreens — their inability to show you a rollover before you click an option — this too can be solved if you add gesture-based or pressure-sensitive control into the mix. Most importantly, it can all be done at a price that consumers can manage, and will be done by companies like Apple, who know how to drive adoption through mass audience appeal and great design.

Some advice? Don’t spend $100 on a whiz-bang mouse, because in a few years the computer mouse may be nothing more than a quaint paperweight. And with all those multiple touches on your monitors, you might want to invest in some screen cleaner.