A fun night at the CCX meetup last night. Oli Weidlich from Contxtual presented a deep dive into spatial design and augmented realities.
For a couple of decades now, Oli has been on the bleeding edge of everything mobile, IoT, quantified-self wearables, kiosk and in-car interfaces, AR/MR/XR, and all sorts of other interesting and innovative interfaces… and spatial computing.
Oli gave a quick snapshot of the evolution of computing from punch cards (not quite Hollerith era), to command line, the GUI, smartphones, and the emergence of spatial computing.
His digital device library is legendary (and museum worthy) and he showed off the new Spectacles from Snap, the Apple Vision Pro, and the Ray-Ban smart glasses.
More importantly than the tech though is the human-centred design and ethical approach to designing for these devices. A lot of this is still very emergent with open questions on how they’ll be socialised. A key way Google Glass failed.
“Everything from customer support services, to education, to workplace collaboration will change when digital content and experiences integrate into the physical world.”
Oli Weidlich
Over the past 15 years Oli has been my go to person for anything related to designing experiences and interactions that involve these types of interfaces. And he’s also one of nicest people you’ll ever meet.
He’s awesome to collaborate with and if you’re wondering what spatial computing might look like in your business, Oli is who you want to be chatting with.
It’s fun to go to a meetup where I’m off duty and not an organiser! Top work Kevin Wilkins, Sylvia Luk, and Lydia Bradshaw for putting on another great CCX meetup. I also got to hang out with a few other members of our Design Connection collective Susan Wolfe, Vera Chan, Kevin Chan, and Martin Tomitsch. Thanks to Sarah Stokes and Atlassian for sponsoring.
