Certain traditions return to us during the Christmas season. We simply go through these motions every year because that's the way it has always been. Most of us never stop to think about why we experience it the way we do. A century and a half ago Christmas was not embraced as the celebration we know today. It was sparked back to life though, generating the return of traditions from around the world and with a focus on a greater good for humankind. This catalyst came from the experience people found in a story: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The story in itself revolves around an experience. A man's redemption over the course of a night.

The power of storytelling is apparent in the success of the book selling 6,000 copies in its first week (a mere hour of visits to Doug McCune’s blog these days). Wikipedia best sums up what the popularity of this tale did: “[A Christmas Carol] played a critical role in redefining the importance of Christmas and the major sentiments associated with the holiday. A Christmas Carol was written during a time of decline in the old Christmas traditions.”

Why the Story Matters

The experience of a single story from the past has affected millions of us today. So how does this relate to UX? Great RIAs not only engage us, but if done right, they also can tell us a story. It might be about the brand itself and how it connects with its customers. It could be an insight into a users information as they see it for the "first time" in a completely new way through data visualization. There are many emerging trends in UX in the way we build and communicate these stories, but becoming just as important, is the form in which they are delivered.

The screens that we interface with are growing at an exponential rate. The experiences we create now will define their future. We are building the groundwork of how these various devices will connect us and affect our lives. There is now a need for the UX professional to take into consideration not just the task at hand, but the circumstances in which that task is being performed. So not only designing something for a smaller screen area but being aware that the user might be on the move. Personally, I have never driven and typed something on my iPhone at the same time... ok, maybe once.

I think that at some point the interface could even be created to learn from each user and become a more singular experience. An Artificial Intelligence (AI) might be built behind the scenes to create a more efficient application. This AI might find usage patterns of a particular user and set up faster ways for them to achieve tasks by anticipating actions. Right now it's up to UX professionals though. We need to find the best techniques to reveal these patterns in the discovery process and capture that information to build from. Either way you look at it, the experiences need to be smarter.

Thoughts From the Frontline

Continuing this thought of future experiences I asked 10 professionals creating RIAs today to talk about where they see trends in UX headed:

"In regards to RIAs, I see data visualization and data exploration to be an area that we will continue to see innovation and commercialization in the space for this upcoming year. As more companies and individuals start to look for areas to apply user experience best practices in the business world, I think that data visualization will be seen as something that has an easily justifiable ROI. A well designed data visualization and interaction model can help companies to create truly differentiated and next generation products by adding to their existing offerings and intellectual property without necessarily having to retool or engineer their base products."

Tom Gonzalez

"User Experience is going to be much more understood and I think you will see people start to recognize the huge benefit of it. UX obviously is going to be a key part of any application, from desktop, browser, to mobile and even in places like cars and homes. I don't see one tool or application saving the day, since UX has been around way before any RIA has. It's still going to take extremely talented people to produce exceptional user experiences. I think you will see many more non- designer/developers start to enter the space into UX if not already."

Joe Johnston

"Consistent user experiences across multiple devices and technologies beyond the browser will be huge. 3D will begin to come into it's own for more widespread UX solutions along with a fusion of video. The focus on good UX will strengthen with a wave a people claiming to be UX experts. Services will become more accessible to the non-technical masses. I am also interested to see the "evolution" of the execution of user experiences. If done right, tools like Flash Catalyst will greatly improve workflow, but open many doors for creating "bad" user experiences. I think this will put further emphasis on working with people who understand good user experience, but also create situations where clients hand you an FXP file their graphic designer put together in Flash Catalyst."

Juan Sanchez

"Temporal Informatics will play a central role in mainstream UX. Temporal informatics is just a fancy way of saying the study of how things change over time, which has always played a role in how we design interfaces. We use design elements as simple as little up or down arrows indicating the change in popularity of an item, or more complex data visualizations like financial charts. But my prediction is that temporal UX won't be limited to only minimal design elements or "enterprise" data visualization, but will instead play a central role in most modern interfaces. The life-streaming services, like Twitter, are gathering massive amounts of temporal data, but we haven't created the innovative interfaces that we need to powerfully navigate the time element of all this data. Experimental work like Zoetrope is pushing the boundaries of temporal interaction design, and I think 2009 will see an explosion of temporal interface design in RIAs."

Doug McCune

"We're going to stop saying "RIA" soon. Every "A" will have internet technology, and hopefully most will be rich. I also think mobile is going to be huge for this space. There are already more mobile devices connected to the web than computers - the proliferation of phones and other handhelds mean application designers will be focusing more on mobile and less on browser."

RJ Owen

"I really believe that going forward, the "Internet" piece of RIAs is going to be a commodity. We are getting to a point where every cell phone, laptop, television, and computer is connected to the Internet. So, as we go into 2009, we are going to keep moving away from a focus on building Rich Internet Applications and focus more on building total Rich Experiences. These "RE"s take the form of not only applications, but a combination of applications and hardware that will redefine how technology and the experience of that technology affect our lives. The inherent connection to the Internet just enables these experiences that touch our lives in some meaningful way."

Andrew Powell

"Two predictions: (1) Better looking apps. There has been too much reliance on out-of-the-box components with little skinning & styling. Now that the Flex community has matured, we'll see a higher incorporation of custom components and advanced skinning. (2) More cutting-edge data visualization and informatics. Expect users to work with Flex RIAs to explore large data sets in the manner they typically do with desktop apps like Excel, SAS and SPSS."

Darrell Ross

"What I believe to be an emerging trend that will continue to foster throughout 2009 lies within the Geospatial world. This idea that ''location-based" information and how you decide to connect with, and use that data will continue to grow and cultivate new models of interaction. With the already growing capabilities, through cell phones, in-car systems and wireless technologies, we've begun to see that connecting and "finding" whatever it is you're looking for has become of significant importance. And we're just now starting to see emerging thoughts, ideas and even some compelling ways that people are beginning to "find" their world!"

Christian Saylor

"We will continue to see the space mature and with that more and more businesses will begin to see the importance of not just using RIA technology but in order differentiate and stand out in the crowd they will need to focus on creating engaging user experiences. Tools like Adobe Flash Catalyst and projects like Degrafa are big steps forward in providing us as developers and designers with the toolsets necessary to deliver these experiences. Additionally, in 2009 we will begin to see a more deliberate movement to provide these experiences across devices, from the desktop to the hand-held to the set top box."

Tim Todish

"Historically we have witnessed an intriguing progression where our technological solutions meet the user. This progression began on paper, progressed to sound, from sound to video, video to interactive, and interactive to immersive. We watch as newspaper circulation and the viewing of commercial television ads decline. At the same moment we are the culture that is defining the immersive digital age. Past ideas about implementing software and designing a graphical user interface will change. Rich Internet Application (RIA) design and development is a stepping-stone towards digital immersion. As we set out to change the game in the way we create software in the RIA space, we discover that our solutions to problems have the potential to be much less confined to a screen or a box than we imagined. In 2009 we will create new tools, new platforms, new channels, and new ideas focused on finding the harmony. So, let's all take that red pill and start building the technological solutions that will define our future."

Adam Flater

To Be Continued in 2009

I would love to see this discussion continue and invite everyone in the community to offer their thoughts on UX in 2009 based on their own experiences and the trends that they have noticed emerging.

We’ll continue on with the UX Revolution next year. Have a good and safe Holiday.

Read more from Francisco Inchauste.