Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences

Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences

Your customer has five senses and a small universe of devices. Why aren't you designing for all of them? Go beyond screens, keyboards, and touchscreens by letting your customer's humanity drive the experience--not a specific device or input type. Learn the techniques you'll need to build fluid, adaptive experiences for multiple inputs, multiple outputs, and multiple devices. The future is multimodal because we are multimodal. Here is an essential guide to unleashing the potential within that symmetry. --—Bill Buxton, Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences This book harnesses our very selfish desire to make cool things into the ability to benefit clients, stakeholders, customers, and society itself. Chock-full of insightful conceptual models and practical applications, designers will be both inspired and prepared. --—Sam Ladner, PhD, author of Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector and Mixed Methods: A Short Guide to Applied Mixed Methods A must-read for anyone wanting to understand the richness and complexity of how users move fluidly between different forms of input, and how to ethically elevate that experience. The attention Platz has given to a manageable structure for ethical reasoning around the problems this tech should be solving is outstanding. --—Per Axbom, co-host of UX Podcast and author of Digital Compassion Cheryl Platz is an internationally-renowned interaction designer best known for her work on a wide variety of emerging technologies and products including Amazon's Alexa voice platform and the Echo Look, Microsoft's Cortana and the Azure platform, and groundbreaking early titles for the Nintendo DS. Her professional passions include natural user interfaces, design for constraint and complexity, systems design, and storytelling for product design. Cheryl's past employers include Microsoft, Amazon, Electronic Arts, Griptonite Games, MAYA Design and Disney Parks. Cheryl is currently a Principal UX Designer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, focused on improving digital collaboration. In her spare time, as owner of design education firm Ideaplatz, LLC, she travels the world sharing her experience designing for new technology (and applying improvisation to design) with other technologists. Cheryl holds a degree in computer science and human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to her design work, Cheryl has been a professional improvisor and performer for well over a decade. She's most frequently seen in Seattle as an ensemble member and teacher at Unexpected Productions, or featured in the hit improvised parody of Star Trek Where No Man Has Gone Before. Her other hobbies include travel, writing and video gaming.