Almost all of us have experienced excluded feeling from product or service once in a life. But it is not our fault as users, it is designers fault for failing to make users feel welcomed to use. Especially, people with disability, and foreign people, and even people with various physical characteristics, such as size of body can be the victims of non-inclusive designs. It can be prevented by proper design process that includes user researches and testings. It tends to be more successful when designers think about the inclusivity in accessibilities in every stages of design process, because it will allow the idea to more focus on ability of users rather than functionality of the products. If designers keep creating exclusive products for people with disability, it may cause the “social construct” of disability to remain in the world, to the point we can say that disability is designed, when they can be solved and banished by users’ ability focused designs. So especially us, interaction designers, who more focus on interaction between users and designed product, have responsibility to get educated about inclusivity, apply that to every stage of design process to redirect the focus of design to users’ ability rather than functionality of product.

Just like that, I started to see technology being carried and taken to everywhere any time, and use them like a part of their natural ability. In short, the technology became mobile. If you want to call someone you had to go to call station to make a call, if you want to flash under the desk, you had to go grab a flashlight, but now, you don’t have to run around the house but just make that happen at the place right away, with one device that you carry around. In addition to the basic accessibilities like camera, flashlight, and clock, the web socialization that was only possible on desktop became available in one tiny device.

So it is a quite big shift in human interaction with technology. Interaction design’s focus developed to mobile UI design from Web UI and feedback design in desktop, which led to the goal of designers, “faster”, and “more naturally” in user experience. Because people can’t be carrying their iPhone out to the street, and do the same amount of tasks you do on desktop. As technology got mobile, interaction designers needed to focus on making human interactions quicker, simpler, and smoother.

For instance, ChatGPT and other Generative AIs open up a lot of concerns over employee replacement and artists’ rights and more. While many evolving companies that treat AI are boosting part of our communities task efficiency, the other part of our communities seem to have problem with how AI’s are taking over their job or rights. So my guess is if governments who are in charge of law enforcement and educational system can control the exposure of AI to the community and educational system can educate people with ethical use of AI.

More accurate the balance between users’ freedom to play around and expand the possibility, governments’ control, and the educational system’s effort in educating people for the new technology, the more we become capable with newer technology and advance and progress faster with evolving technology.

I know it’s not as simple as I assume, but this is my opinion based on my knowledge.

Meanwhile, the style of original icon of “file” on desktops haven’t change! Other than that, the concept of direct manipulation such as drag and drop and menu bar, the way that designers hold user testings to improve their work remains the same.

In my opinion, by adding collaborative features with AI and inclusion of Natural user interfaces can improve work efficiency of users by shortcutting user tasks and capturing users’ task patterns to predict next behaviors. I feel that as technology improves, users’ capacity to work with new features increase. It’s time to move on from GUIs!