Emerging Technologies and User Experience

Early Experiences with Technology

“I’ve always been a geek for new technologies,” replies Richard. “My childhood predates the Internet and mobile phones. I remember getting my first video-game console, the Magnavox Odyssey II, in the late ’70s, and having my mind completely blown.

“Around the same time, I was really into choose-your-own-adventure books. I loved how, each time I made new choices, I’d get a new story. Of course, eventually, I’d exhaust all the choices and run out of new stories.

“On the other hand, interacting with video games offered endless possibilities. I was amazed that I could control these virtual worlds and at how the characters in the games responded to my interactions with them.

“My amazement and curiosity about new technologies continues unabated today—with virtual and augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and more. What I find so fascinating is the ability of technology to help me adapt how I might naturally interact with the real world, but in ways that are faster, smarter, and, in many ways, better.”

Like Richard, my family also had a Magnavox Odyssey 2, shown in Figure 1. It brought a new world into our home. Not only was it fun to play the games using a joystick, there was also a certain magic about having a computer in the house. Before then, claims that “every home will have a computer someday” had seemed far-fetched, but then we had one. Technology was accessible. Sure, we used the Odyssey mostly for playing games, but it also included the “Computer Intro” assembly-language cartridge, which gave everyone the potential power to program the computer. I found it fascinating that knowing how to type some special words into the computer could let me create of a fun game myself. Having access to this technology at home was very special because, at that time, computers were either huge mainframes in big corporations or were extremely expensive.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons. (Licensed by Evan-Amos under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.)

When cell-phone minutes were still expensive, I was surprised to hear a coworker tell this story: He saw a person at a store, holding up two shirts, speaking to another person on a mobile phone, and asking, “Do you want the red one or the blue one?” It seemed outlandish that someone would spend so much money to get an answer to such a simple question.

Fast forward to today, and we have a sometimes overwhelming supply of technology at our fingertips: smartphones, fitness watches, tablets, smart appliances, and notebook computers—to name just a few. Most homes now have at least one computer. We are connected to others constantly by smartphone—whether to ask what color shirt someone wants, where friends want to meet for dinner, or how a friend’s day is going. Now, there are apps for practically everything—whether to find a ride to the airport, order food from a restaurant, get recommendations for just about anything, or search for real estate. Sometimes it seems like there are too many choices.