Imagine waving your arms to switch on your lights or following a prompt to reschedule a meeting for later because your location and speed indicate that you’re running late. This is the future of user experience design.

User experience design will pave the way for digital products by tapping into users’ senses, such as sight, touch, and hearing, and expand into our physical worlds with environment experience design. Expansion will leverage non-traditional senses, too, including acceleration and balance, pain, heart rate and temperature. As users are increasingly becoming reliant on digital products and good user experience design, it’s important to anticipate what’s next. Here’s what’s ahead in UX:

Prevalence of Haptic Technology

Haptic technology is set to grow by 16.20 percent by 2020 thanks to key drivers, such as smartphones and gaming consoles. It’s used in many technology genres from virtual reality to mobile phones. Today, haptic technology enables us to feel the vibration from a game console in our hands, but imagine what could happen if it becomes a fully immersive experience. UX can be designed to not only recognize a tap to start a game on a phone, but to suggest games to play based on the user’s temperature.

Personalization via Environment Experience Design

With environment experience design, the future of technology will expand from people tapping icons on their mobile devices, smartwatches, or websites to include arm movements, heartbeat sensors and repetitive behaviors. This means that UX is set to have a foundation based on environment design.

Thanks to the Internet of Things and sensors, human interaction with technology is expanding into the physical world. Users can expect UX design to expand into the physical world with technology that leverages non-traditional senses to work seamlessly with digital products and devices for an enhanced user experience. For example, if you go for a run and play an upbeat song but your heart rate increases, your device will continue playing the song you chose. However, environment experience design will tap into your physical world by “sensing” your acceleration and heart beat. Once you’ve completed your run, heart sensors will recognize the decrease in beats per minute and alerts you, prompting you to consider playing softer music.

Final Thoughts

With interactive technology and design, such as haptic technology and environment experience design, UX design will raise the bar for digital products. As expansion will go beyond just traditional senses and merge into our physical environment, it’s important to consider how people will interact with this technology, designing products, apps, and websites for the best user experience possible.

Sources:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/haptics
http://uxmag.com/articles/let%E2%80%99s-get-physical
http://www.creativebloq.com/ux/the-user-experience-of-virtual-reality-31619635
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/haptic-technology.asp
https://uxmag.com/articles/the-future-is-near-13-design-predictions-for-2017
https://www.forbes.com/sites/propointgraphics/2016/10/09/the-future-of-ux/#559536505d79
https://www.wired.com/2013/02/haptics/