The web, the future, and us

Sally Jenkinson @sjenkinson . sally@recordssoundthesame.com

All these moments will be lost in time

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

The internet of 2021

@sjenkinson

youtube.com/watch?v=8p0jmewhXeU @sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

What challenges does the future bring?

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

What we plan now may not be relevant in the

future

@sjenkinson

Our project

@sjenkinson

Our users

Our business

Technology

Wildcards

Our project

@sjenkinson@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

http://opensignal.com/reports/2015/08/android-fragmentation/

@sjenkinson

Disruption will only accelerate

Our existing standards, workflows and infrastructure won’t hold up

Proprietary solutions will dominate at first

The standards process will be painfully slow.

Acknowledge and embrace unpredictability.

Think and behave in a future-friendly way.

Help others do the same.

futurefriendlyweb.com

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Our choices can become white elephants

@sjenkinson@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Keeping up vs getting ahead

“It’s all broken!”

@sjenkinson

“We have to throw it out and

start again!”

@sjenkinson

“…be guaranteed to meet the business

and customer needs for the next 5-10 years at least…”

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Keeping up as individuals

@sjenkinson@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

The future is hard!

@sjenkinson

The future, from the past

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

“Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for super fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment. !

This is where things get tricky.”

teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Telling stories can give human context to

technology

flickr.com/photos/randar/16862053922 @sjenkinson

goo.gl/8IKgEd @sjenkinson

flickr.com/photos/foam/9248390752/ @sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

“a work kit useful for parceling ideas into their

atomic elements”

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Interactions and interfaces

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

“We’ve seen repeatedly that if an interface works for an audience, there’s something there

that will work for users. !

Finding what that thing is and using it for inspiration in our own work is part of how we can

use these speculative interfaces.”

Make It So (scifiinterfaces.com)

flickr.com/photos/blile59/3547072689 @sjenkinson

flickr.com/photos/frinky/2288705567/ @sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Using future thinking

1. Better consider our users’ changing needs.

2. Identify opportunities.

3. Aid prioritisation.

4. Define what something is and what it will be.

5. More robust decisions - understand limitations and benefits of choices.

6. React quickly/better to change by embracing evolution.

7. Make more exciting things and shape the future of the web!

Future benefits

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

The future & our work

flickr.com/photos/oflittleinterest/8171299893/ @sjenkinson

Half-life

@sjenkinson

User interfaces & interactions

Features

Digital platform components (CMS, etc)

‘Non-digital’ systems (accountancy, etc)

Browsers

Hosting environment & languages

Third party integrations

Deployment tools

Different elements have different half-lives

@sjenkinson

Choose technologies and architect your developments

with half-lives in mind

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Separate concerns, loosely couple

Think in patterns, not pages

Modular CSS

Enhance!

“Zero UI is … taking us away from screens to a more natural way of interacting with things”

Andy Goodman @goodmania

Submit

doStuff()

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

A practical approach to the future

Start thinking about the future(s) in discovery & planning

Work content first

Separate content from display to better cater for new outputs (visual

or otherwise)

Where screens are involved, remember to think from very small to very large

Prioritise your requirements

Create a backlog and strategic

roadmap & make these visible

Balance problems now & of the future

Consider future usage patterns, interactions,

and behaviour

Embrace wider trends (remote

teams etc)

Learn from the past

Don’t be bound by

form

Create a set of high level principles for

the futureMake no

assumptions about usage

Stories and design thinking

(workshops)

Example principles

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

Frederik Pohl

flickr.com/photos/s-t-r-a-n-g-e/8292748067

“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam”

@sjenkinson

Embrace web standards, semantics,

open formats

Progressive enhancement

Create incrementally, release often

Track & manage change

Think atomically, and with patterns, not

pages

Allocate time to improve the past and

the future

Lifespan of project components

Separation, modularity, loosely-coupled

architectures and services

Embrace automation

Document decisions (not heavily, but ensure the past is captured for future

learning)

Prototype & test

Design and build with change as a given

Responsive design

Leave space for the future

Draw a line - what do you support? Why?

@sjenkinson

Share your experiences

Specs & upcoming

technologies

Measure, & use your data

Better digital preservation

Play moreTake inspiration from the world

(watch more sci-fi!)

Continuing your evolution

Accept change. It doesn’t mean you failed

Work to educate others, to facilitate

improvements

Fix problems that you can see, and those that might be

Provide support (bleeding edge technology users often have it rough)

@sjenkinson

flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/4011568197 @sjenkinson

“Don’t plan for the future because there is no future - just now and a series of next nows.”

Jon Gold @jongold

@sjenkinson sally@recordssoundthesame.com

recordssoundthesame.com

Thank you!

My slides are mainly blue because according to Make It So, blue is ‘futuristic’ - it’s the most prevalent colour in sci-fi interfaces!

flaticon.com/packs/color-startups-and-new-business