I have witnessed the future. And it is User Experience.

This past Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure to learn, share, and socialize with my peers. The venue- an Arts-based charter school in Northwest DC. The event- UXCamp DC.

If you haven’t attended a “barcamp” before then you are missing out. It’s a great day of spontaneous presentations, voting with your feet (which means if you don’t like the presentation you just get up and go to another one), and sharing experiences with your peers. There is rarely any controversy or drama, just the occasional “I wish he would stop trying to sell his services and just answer my question” kinda guys.

The two stand out presentations were made by Josh Blake and Mike Lee. Josh, a local Microsoft interface guru, displayed his current thinking from his upcoming book about Natural User Interfaces. And like Josh, Mike Lee opened the discussion with lots of tactile goodies from MIT’s Innovation Lab. See, there were lots of great presentations about the Web and User Experience. But Josh and Mike took us out of our comfort zones and out on a journey reminiscent of scenes from the movie, “The Minority Report.”

Don’t get me wrong. The Web is not dead. But as technology gets smaller things evolve. And as things evolve the User Experience will be a key component to the successful adoption of the technology. Josh spoke about doing away with the mouse. Mike spoke about doing away with the computer as we know it. Imagine a computer the size of two inch by two inch cubes. It changes everything.

The best part of the day however was sharing ideas, solutions, and experiences with the people who advocate for the user every day. It’s not easy representing the user. Because as humans we do strange things some times. It is our job though to make the interfaces they interact with as natural as possible. And that is why the User Experience will be here to stay for a long time coming.

Thanks UXCamp DC for a great Saturday!

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