How APIs move design forward

The future of our designed world will likely have more technology, less interfaces and smoother interactions that make the two possible. What this can mean, if we design it so, is that people will spend less time installing software, trading screen names or fidgeting devices and spend more time with each other whether in person and virtually.

In Mark Weiser’s seminal piece about ubiquitous computing, written at Xerox Parc in 1999  (linked below), he says,

By pushing computers into the background, embodied virtuality will make individuals more aware of people on the other ends of their computer links… Even today people holed up in windowless offices before glowing computer screens may not see their fellows for the better part of each day. And in virtual reality, the outside world and all in habitants effectively cease to exist.

Ubiquitous computers, in contrast, reside in the human world and pose no barrier to personal interactions. If anything, the transparent connections they offer between different locations and times may tend to bring communities closer together.

He then predicted a world with computers the size of iPhones, iPads and table top computers at a time when one computer was as big as a room. And how wild, to think about taking a computer to the jungle or the beach. But beyond that, computers would be more than  small and super charged, but be powered with intensely networks of information. And for all his predictions, many which have manifested and exist today, his closing statement is yet to be designed. He says

Most importantly, ubiquitous computers will help overcome the problem of information overload. There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than any other computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating.

Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods.

APIs innovating society

Years after Weiser’s article, Indiana University professor Yvonne Rogers, critiqued that ubiquitous computing, computers everywhere that is, should not be responsive but proactive. She said they should not simply just embedded in our environment and ignored, but powered in a way to improve our society. She says,

Instead of augmenting the environment to reduce the need for humans to think for themselves about what to do, what to select, etc., and doing it for them, we should consider how Ubi- Comp technologies can be designed to augment the human intellect so that people can perform ever greater feats, extending their ability to learn, make decisions, reason, create, solve complex problems and generate innovative ideas.

What we should do is leverage the tools and the data we have, pipe it into a streams that make it accessible and innovate and improve technology, society and our intellects.

In the same paper, she later writes about how better organization of data can empower programmers and designers to make better services for people. She presents her statement in a way that aligns closely to how we can relate APIs and experience design:

With respect to interaction design issues, we need to consider how to represent and present data and information that will enable people to more extensively compute, analyze, integrate, inquire and make decisions; how to design appropriate kinds of interfaces and interaction styles for combinations of devices, displays and tools; and how to provide transparent systems that people can understand sufficiently to know how to control and interact with them.

Smart, powerful and well designed APIs make it possible to stream data, integrate it in multiple platforms and give programmers and designer the power to transform never ending lists of numbers and letters into consumable, usable information to incite action.

APIs moving design forward

Let us in the design community broaden how we think about design and Design and experience design and interaction design and interface design and information design and graphic design.Let us heighten our knowledge, step back and think about the world in which we want to live in and how we’ll create that to be true. Let us narrow the philosophical and task oriented gaps between developers and designers to create betters services and get computers out of our way.By this I mean two things:

1. The first is for designers and developers to build products together.  They should maintain their domains but iterate, code, sketch, design and build in tandem.
2. The second is for designers and developers philosophize and idea together. This phase happens far away from terminal and the Adobe suite. But by exploring the ideas of what can be made, how it can work and who it can help. What technology exists today, how can we move it forward and where can it fit in our society? What do we need to make? And more importantly, what can we take away?

The rich explorations about APIs in the design community are yet to be had. APIs have an intense relationship with a version of the future that has fewer visible computers, less interfaces, more natural people-to-people interactions and hopefully more walks in the woods. So yes, let us design the world in which we want to live today, but let us also build the tools we’ll need for the future.

Very soon, tasks like designing screen flows and A/B testing button colors will be replaced by decisions about embodied interactions, ambient technology, systems integrated with each other and our environment. Building the future of technology will mean designing out today’s computer. We’ll build tools that empower the intellect of society to move their own worlds forward.

Notes