Device Multiplicity
Demands Magical Continuity
appropriate, given the physical or
cognitive context, such as social,
audio, or lighting cues of the
surroundings.
There needs to be a kind of “smart
ghost” that pervades the system as it
extends across devices and platforms,
via the APIs and protocols and
handshakes, to serve as a connective
intelligence to enhance continuity and
support the perception of a unified,
smooth experience. Thus, when you
pick up and interact with one device,
your other devices know what you
did and when and perhaps for how
long, and in what sequence, and
physically where it occurred. There’s
knowledge of battery power and of
social gestures such as sharing and
liking. There’s knowledge of when to
pick up where a task was left off from
one device to another, across platforms,
across networks—even across
identities and profiles. And, of course,
there is knowledge of device form
factors (screen size, resolution, and
orientation) to further enrich a magical
sense of awareness.
Yes, the system magically
“knows” (or more accurately,
employs sophisticated machine
learning algorithms and sensor-based
techniques) how to fluidly support
natural, distributed cross-device
behaviors, so it’s more than just pretty
screens rendered nicely on different
slabs of glass—which will eventually
wrap around your wrist or even your
neck! In effect, these responsively
designed screens become a powerful
kind of coordination and camaraderie
that help you get through your day.
There’s one more thing needed to
fully realize this “magic”: knowing
when to expose the seams and edges
of that continuity. The smart ghost
must allow for users to break apart
Hello, welcome to my new column!
It’s my hope to add to the ever-evolving
discourse on design through the
reflections conveyed here. My belief is
that through “some radical notions”
we can reinterpret the ordinary to
achieve the extraordinary, perhaps in
unexpected ways, and advance design
progress in the world. So, with that, let’s
talk about something commonly suffered:
too many supposedly smart devices!
It has become quite routine to present a multi-device graphic, complete with laptop, tablet, and phone as a unified happy family when selling a branded product or service. This imagery ostensibly promotes cross-device flexibility,
if not uniformity. Today, that’s simply
a baseline expectation, given that
many people use multiple mobile
devices over the course of a day, or
across many days. And yet, underneath
this benign ubiquity there’s the
ominous specter of interminable,
inescapable notifications/alerts/
messages (i.e., “attention-disrupting
entities”) distracting you anywhere,
anytime. With the emergence of
wearables, there is the dubious
sense of being alerted on any part
of your body—of devices buzzing
with thrilling delight, yet not in a
pleasurable way! So many different
sensorial indications combined with
temporal gaps of “information jet lag”
across devices amplify the tedious
annoyance of playing catch-up, or
being redundantly bothered across
different screens and devices. Turn off
one alert and another is buzzing—it’s
truly a game of modern-day Whac-A-Mole, with distraction and dispersion
of attention. My, oh, my! What can
we do?
When you think about it, this
insistent push for the multiplicity of
data in a variety of forms demands a
continuity of experience and, thus,
intelligence of the system. There
needs to be a nicely arbitrated model
of interaction between the user and
all of her means of engagement and
modes of expression. This necessarily
goes beyond a coherent visual design
system—although that is a vital
benchmark—and possibly includes
moments of breaking consistency.
At a macro-interaction level, there
must be a well-defined set of principles
around contextual awareness and
smart defaults, with a silent, magical
sense of “knowing.” Ah, there’s the
rub! How does a device (and more
accurately, the app, service, or system)
know anything about you? Sure,
there’s historical data and deductions
based upon user gestures (likes,
recommendations, etc.) at the micro-
interaction level. But what we need is
a richer sense of knowing that involves
an interrelated mix of the following:
• smart assumptions made by the
product team, including engineering
and product management, informed
by customer insights
• smart adaptations to contexts and
situations, to provide the right data, at
the right time, in the right format per
context or activity in progress
• smart inconsistencies to break
the visual or behavioral model where
There needs to be
a kind of “smart ghost”
that pervades the
system as it extends
across devices
and platforms.
INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG 20 INTERACTIONS MARCH–APRIL2015
COLUMN THE DESIGNERS’ SPEAKEASY
Uday Gajendar,
CloudPhysics