Rosie Campbell: Designing for screens that don't exist yet

Rosie Campbell was talking about designing for screens that don't exist yet at Responsive Conf, these are my notes from her talk.

In the beginning people were using computer monitors to view the web, it was hard to get things looking the same on every browser.  As browsers were getting better we got more devices and getting content to adapt was the problem.

Screens are only going to get weirder - VR, fridges, watches, wallpaper.  How do we create sites for screens that don't exist?

Smart wallpaper

What if we had flexible electronic wallpaper? 

Let UX drive the design, not the technology.  Take inspiration from science fiction to create design fiction. Don't think about the hardware.  Have an ideas amnesty - think of as many silly ideas as you can and take the most plausible forwards.  Turn ideas into interactive prototype - fake things that don't exist yet to try out ideas - get insights from using things to feed back into the design and take into other projects.

Constraints breed creativity.  Making assumptions can tease out novel ideas providing you are flexible.  Wallpaper is likely to be more like E Ink than a TV screen so slow refresh.

Stay agnostic to underlying hardware - almost anything that comes out will have a web browser so using standard web technologies is a future friendly choice.

We're good at rectangles, there's no guarantee that future displays will even be a regular shape.  Some content might need to be a certain place (e.g. a clock). 

Home OS

How do we create an operating system for the home?  Need to give people choice - can't just force our design into people's homes.

• Think UX first
• Use constraints
• Stay hard ware agnostic
• Reframe responsive
• Watch Sci-Fi