Pierre’s logs

Designers have traditionally focused on enhancing the look and functionality of products.  Recently, they have begun using design tools to tackle more complex problems, such as finding ways to provide low-cost healthcare throughout the world.  Businesses were first to embrace this new approach—called design thinking—now nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too.

Citizen Designer

... author Steven Heller on design responsibilities

Milton Glaser often says, "Good design is good citizenship." But does this mean making good design is an indispensable obligation to the society and culture in which designers are citizens? Or does it suggest that design has inherent properties that when applied in a responsible manner contribute to a well-being that enhances everyone's life as a citizen?
      For the answer we must also ask the question: What is good design? Is it rightness of form or aesthetic perfection? Is it flawless conception or intelligent usability? The converse, bad or poor design is design that doesn't work. So, is bad design bad citizenship? In fact, bad design is just plain mean while good design presumably serves many citizens.
      Nonetheless, "goodness" is subjective and one can be a good (or great) designer without necessarily being a good citizen. But if good design (regardless of style or mannerism) adds value to society, by either pushing the cultural envelope or maintaining the status quo at a high level, then design and citizenship must go hand in hand.
      Thomas Watson Jr. said, "Good design is good business." When the former IBM chairman and leading American corporate design patron proclaimed this in the fifties, business was the white knight of postwar American society. Yet during the subsequent years, good business has not always been good business, and good design has sometimes unwittingly supported bad companies.

User interfaces—the way we interact with our technologies—have evolved a lot over the years.

From the original punch cards and printouts to monitors, mouses, and keyboards, all the way to the track pad, voice recognition, and interfaces designed to make it easier for the disabled to use computers, interfaces have progressed rapidly within the last few decades.

But there’s still a long way to go and there are many possible directions that future interface designs could take. We’re already seeing some start to crop up and its exciting to think about how they’ll change our lives.

In this article are than a dozen potential future user interfaces that we’ll be seeing over the next few years (and some further into the future).