It might very well be true that the only naturally intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, the argument goes, interfaces must be learned. The field of user interface design is mature by now, having evolved during the dotcom boom of the 90s to a niche field of highly skilled graphic artists and technology enthusiasts. But just as social content management systems are becoming increasingly easy to use, so armchair publishers (read: anyone with an internet connection) are creating content of higher and higher quality. Social CMSs, like Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr and Twitter, are become so customizable that it’s easier than ever to get a unique, decent looking website up in no time. Have we therefore reached the point where user interface design has become, like the neighborhood newletter or corporate flowchart, part of everyday design?
Now I’m probably just as tired as you are of the blather we’re subjected to constantly about how Twitter is changing the way we live, with all the authors, journalists, DJs, anchors and bloggers feeling they must reference this so-called phenomenon each hour of each day. But Steven Johnson’s description of said phenomenon is particularly interesting:
The speed with which users have extended Twitter’s platform points to a larger truth about modern innovation. When we talk about innovation and global competitiveness, we tend to fall back on the easy metric of patents and Ph.D.s. It turns out the U.S. share of both has been in steady decline since peaking in the early ’70s.
MIT professor Eric von Hippel calls one “end-user innovation,” in which consumers actively modify a product to adapt it to their needs. In its short life, Twitter has been a hothouse of end-user innovation: the hashtag; searching; its 11,000 third-party applications… All of these adoptions create new kinds of value in the wider economy, and none of them actually originated at Twitter HQ. You don’t need patents or Ph.D.s to build on this kind of platform.
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