Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Ivy Knight

I recently attended Streaming Media West, a media and entertainment conference that included panels on how media consumption is changing our digital age. While there were thorough panels on the best video players, the topic of new mediums were addressed in various forms: VR, machine learning, AR, a topic that by now has been addressed numerous times, mostly on how one of them is dead or the ‘one to win.’ But the greatest takeaway was these are new mediums and methods of consumption, we will need to evolve new guidelines and content to fully utilize them.

What does that mean?
At one point everything we interact with and watch was a new form.

Not too long ago we were all trying to figure out what to do with the pocket computers we carry around with us everyday. We couldn’t slap standard websites or desktop applications on them, mobile web and native apps evolved into what they are now.

The Medium is the Message (or Massage), still reigns. How and what we view or interact with content through shapes the message of the content.

Look at poster design: The common user is walking down the street, their environment is taken up by other posters, billboards, people, storefronts… the poster only has a second or less to convey the message, design had to take this into account, even if the marketing department handed over a novel length of copy, it’s trimmed down and presented by the means of poster design and production.

We can even relook at how poster design is evolving with the reaction to smartphones and more screens in our space. The advertising or marketing role has moved more to digital screens in our environment, while there has been a resurgence of posters as art with limited runs.

Jim Kalbach wrote, in 2002 about the need for us to look at websites differently, “Developing fixed-size Web pages is a fundamentally flawed practice. Not only does it result in Web pages that remain at a constant size regardless of the user’s browser size, but it fails to take advantage of the medium’s flexibility.” At the time 800×600 was what we designed websites at, there wasn’t much thought put in about the rise of multiple monitor resolutions or increasing devices. Just 800×600, or less, and if the table layout didn’t look right, then a badge or popup requesting the site be viewed at a certain resolution was the solution. Kalbach is writing about the first responsive site (Audi 2002), which meant websites would look at what the user’s screen size was and adapt accordingly. Our thinking about a set size changed to better suit the medium, along with other changes like the dismissal of the “fold” an idea brought over from an older medium, newspaper.

The first go with any new medium is to use current methods.

“We took cameras and pointed them at radio dramas.” — Devon Copley

The iOS Human Interface Guidelines are now nearly a decade old, although it was way ahead of the game, it evolved from previous human interface guidelines with the thought in mind of the tight consistent experience for a touch screen device. As the experience has changed on iOS, so has the guidelines, but experience is always first.

TV as the medium
What’s old is new again, by bringing interactive design into the living room with 10ft experiences via ‘smart TV’ technologies like apple TV, roku, and Android TV. We took our old mediums and put them on camera, from there content evolved. There is no longer live commercials for cough syrup.

TV is again going through a change in content and delivery with new technology forcing these changes. As a mobile designer smart TVs have became available to us to design for, but trying to get UI right for 10ft experiences is different from our other mobile experiences, you can’t just fit tablet to TV, instead content needs to be adjusted for the method of interaction via a variety of remotes, text needs to be considered from afar, the information load needs to be even lighter than on a screen that’s held up close.
The human-computer interface is different from what we typically design for, there is no direct clicking or tapping, the remote relies on a more directional pad approach (or directional swipes for new apple TV).

Applied to the newest thing

Right now we are consuming the media meant for our current mediums.
The experiences for AR and VR are slowly being defined, with new guidelines and tips for production, but as I wrote about last year most are about designing UI for the technology and not how to design content for the medium. AR is a bit easier since we’ve had some sort of experience with it in our lives, like the crazy popular Pokemon Go or the less obvious use in live sports TV.

The content of a medium enforces the experience of the medium, if we are only focusing on making VR experiences instead of VR content then we’ll be stuck in a rut. A mass audience and monetization will come when devices are cheaper, much like TVs. Making rushed dismissals will only hinder progress.

It won’t happen overnight and there is no one clickbait answer.

The only way to get there is through chances and experimentation. The guidelines and insights that are emerging are results of messing around with the technology. The discovery of VR as a means to consume long form content came through testing with users.

While games for VR has had more exploration, social has had far less, and may open up something that only virtual reality can deliver. With Facebook releasing Spaces, it’ll be an evolution in content.

With cheaper entry points into new mediums, and movies like Ready Player One coming out to spark mass interest it’s a better time than ever to start creating content.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

New Mediums and Growing Pains was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

New Mediums and Growing Pains

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