Bursting our Digital Bubbles: Life Beyond the App

30 years ago, a common caricature of computing was of a frustrated user sat staring at a PC hands hovering over a keyboard and mouse. Nowadays, the picture is very different. The PC has been largely overtaken by the laptop, the smartphone and the tablet; more and more people are using them extensively and everywhere as they go about their working and everyday lives. Instead the caricature has become one of people increasingly living in their own digital bubbles - heads-down glued to a mobile device, pecking and swiping at digital content with one finger. How can designers and researchers break out of this app mindset to exploit the new generation of affordable multimodal technologies, in the form of physical computing, internet of things, and sensor toolkits, to begin creating more diverse heads-up, hands-on, arms-out user experiences? In my talk I will argue for a radical rethink of our relationship with future technologies. One that inspires us, through shared devices, tools and data, to be more creative, playful and thoughtful of each other and our surrounding environments.