Responsive Design

Tagged as: engaging, technology, trends
Posted by: Nita Rollins 

 

Sent to NYC to experience the future firsthand at MOMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind, let me begin by saying that reportage is rarely more exhilarating. An exploration of (as the show’s superb catalog would have it) “…one of design’s most fundamental roles: the translation of scientific and technological revolutions into approachable objects that change people’s lives and, as a consequence, the world,” the show was both provocative and practical, optimistic and urgent, sci-fi clunky and simply ravishing, nano and macro—this latter spectrum in particular requiring a certain mental elasticity to span.

As digital marketers, we also know that one of design’s most fundamental roles is the translation of basic human requirements into viable commercial experiences. Usability and digital ethnography help us build a matrix of intelligibility and desirability behind every web site, mobisode and digital POS system.

Until now, the human body has had paltry interaction with brands’ digital interfaces and environments. So addictive and liberating is the iPhone “pinch” (an example of gestural computing), it’s tempting to think of it as having given rise to a new species of computer-literature humans: those with opposable thumbs! (Lest we forget, this is the distinguishing feature of primates and that which permits the use of tools.) Typing with thumbs on PDAs doesn’t count: here the thumb acts as just another index finger—on its own, doing the same basic act of button-pressing.

One installation at Design and the Elastic Mind, entitled “Shadow Monsters” and part of “Not Your Usual Interfaces”, invited greater bodily involvement with the digital universe. A magic lantern show-meets-performance art installation, its responsive design embellished certain physical movements of the participants with sinister appendages (accompanied by monster growls and such), making Monsters one of the indisputable hits of the show. See me on the left, my muscle-flex gesture suddenly met with snapping tentacles (while trying to capture the shot, of course.) Saw-toothed hands kept many people performing way past the point of there being any point. Except, of course, complete captivation by the phantasmagorical world of inner demons unleashed. (Talk about Engaging.)

Responsive design is a trend we’ll be monitoring because it pushes basic usability insights to ever more intuitive and imaginative heights. Moreover, the retail possibilities are myriad. What if… (cue my favorite part of futuring) changing rooms offered fantasy backgrounds and accouterments? Trying on lingerie would trigger the projection of a five-star hotel suite; prom dresses would prompt tiaras, red carpets, popping paparazzi light bulbs, James Bond escorts.

When it comes to digital brand experiences, it’s about time the (rest of the) body showed up, don’t you think?

Tagged as: engaging, technology, trends

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