So What’s Next?
By Donovan Panone on Friday, August 3rd, 2007I’d like to use this post to start a discussion about the future of the web. While Web 2.0 is a label given to the evolution of the online medium, most of the ideas often associated with that label really aren’t new.
I spoke about this at a recent event - how Web 2.0 is more about a collection of principles than a bunch of features. I also mentioned that if the web was to continue to evolve, we needed to stop thinking about ideas in terms of “features” and more about creatively addressing user needs and business challenges with original thought - thoughts around architecting interactive strategies aligned with how users interact and consume information on the web today.
I’ve been in the industry a little over 8 years now, and it seems that most of the ideas that have been generated over the last few years are not dramatically new. During the dot-com days, and its subsequent aftermath, a lot of great ideas were built up due to the newness and excitement around the medium. But like a kink in a water hose, technology limitations prevented those ideas from flowing and there was a corporate thumb over the nozzle, blocking the ideas from getting through. Over the last couple of years, the kink has loosened and budgets are shifting toward interactive. As a result, many of the ideas being implemented today are ones that were fighting for existence a few years ago.
My point? I believe this new flow of old ideas has caused the stagnation of original thought. We got so excited that we finally pushed through an idea we’ve been passionate about that our focus shifted away from coming up with new ones. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there aren’t any new ideas today. The Web 2.0 movement has caused people to start the ideation process again. But, for the most part, these ideas are being conceived by a small percentage of people.
The larger percentage of ideas being generated by companies and agencies today are either jumping on a fad bandwagon, recycled ideas from years past or the replication of a feature already being used by their competitors or the latest cool site. Unfortunately, this often results in the misapplication of the idea - either not aligned with user needs, the business objective or both.
Maybe it has always been this way and always will, but I do think the web is at a growth stage where the time is right for a surge of new ideas.
So now what? How do we shape the future of the web without staying attached to the past? I’ve got a few ideas, but I want to see what you think. Discuss…
Interesting! I think we partly accomplish this by balancing a focus on the web medium (its capabilities and constraints) with a focus on the problem(s) we’re trying to solve or the needs we’re trying to meet. Many innovations in general come from understanding the real cause of a problem and having a new perspective on it. For instance, the innovation of using large containers in shipping came from a trucker, Malcolm McLean, in the 1950s. The freight shipping industry suffered from problems in efficiency, and they tried to solve the problem by making the ships faster. They reached a point where the ships couldn’t go any faster. McLean observed that the real cause of the problem was how long it took to unload ships. He had been using small, stacked containers in trucking, and he applied that idea to shipping on a bigger scale–large stacked containers.
We understand the real cause of problems or needs through research and analysis. We bring new perspectives to problems through creativity, experience, and logic/reasoning.
So…since I have recently renamed my personal blog “So…what’s next” I felt compelled to answer this question
Here is what I see. For someone like me it has never been about the technology, it is about culture change. I guess my generation (X) is a great bridge that gets to see both sides. I remember marketing my husband’s band with a typewriter that had a broken correction tape (Thank goodness for white-out) and a Xerox machine, to being able to mass email people have a website. The reach became greater, the communication faster.
The culture changed because many barriers came down. The fall of such barriers led to people who could not innovate because of lack of resources suddenly becoming great innovators. Such innovation led us from static ecommerce sites to a new culture shift of collaboration. May I say collaboration with even fewer barriers than we had 2 years ago. That means faster innovation, more ideas that will shake things up, more learning curves, and more people falling behind the learning curves.
So, what’s next is actually a scary question for me. Those who are hanging on to the past (and there are way too many) are going to struggle while a new ‘elite’ will be moving things right along.
We really do need to sit back and consider how we handle this new surge. I do not feel the need to slow it down, but I do feel the need to shake up our education system and our corporate structures.
DP - I think what’s next will be something more than Web 2.1. Maybe Web 2.5, or if I dare to think - maybe even Web 3.0. Or, maybe it will get really crazy and something like Web 2008 will come out.
One of the biggest challenges we have as User Experience professionals, is that if we push innovation too fast we leave the user behind. Just as they have become accostomed to learning an interface or the get settled with a standard convention, we change things up. Even if it is better, change is not easy for anyone and we risk losing customers.
I think the process of public “betas” such as what Yahoo and Google have been doing will become more common place as companies test the waters with innovation.