Gestures, swipes, and touch. These three things are where the user experience for not only the web, but software as well, is headed. A prime example would be the concept behind the looming BBC website redesign.
This week, the beta site went live for all to see, as PaidContent noted.
The BBC comments: “The beta provides a first glimpse of core design principles that will underpin the reshaped BBC Online, which take into account changing user behaviours including the preference for ‘swiping’ through content – increasingly intuitive given the rise of touch-screen smart phones and tablets.”
“It is envisaged that these principles will be reflected across the evolving products of BBC Online, and pave the way for a graphically-rich London 2012 Olympics digital offer.”
The site is full of interactive carousels that "could make the page work harder to showcase more of the BBC’s output on air, on TV and online," says the BBC. Check it out below.
This is where user experience is headed — just look at Apple.
Released with the new OSX Lion software is a new trackpad, complete with a nice list of gestures, or swipes to interact with what's on screen.
Ever-innovative, Apple was the first to eliminate the floppy drive from computers (the first iMac), the first to eliminate the CD drive (the MacBook Air), pioneered the tablet and touchscreen smartphone, and now it's reinventing the trackpad, to banish the mouse altogether and train users to swipe in this new tablet era.
What separates the trackpad from the mouse is the way your fingers actually interact with what's happening on-screen. On a mouse, you typically scroll down by moving your fingers in a downward motion along the scroller, or in Apple's case the magic mouse — the first mouse to eliminate a physical scroller by the way.
On the track pad, the gestures involved are the same as if you were physically moving something; in this case, to scroll down a page you would move your fingers, or "swipe" or "push" upwards, as if you were moving paper in real life. This is the type of technology and interaction that is a part of the so far incomplete definition of Web 3.0.
The lead author of the Metaverse Roadmap, John Smart, defines Web 3.0 as the first-generation Metaverse (convergence of the virtual and physical world), a web development layer that includes TV-quality, open video, 3D simulations, augmented reality, human-constructed semantic standards, and pervasive broadband, wireless, and sensors.
This is definitely where the web is headed, with the BBC and Apple helping lead the charge.
Another incredibly interactive and gestural/swipe-based website is griplimited.com, an advertising agency located in Canada.
Pay attention — this is where the web is headed.
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