So everyone is scrambling to catch the Google Home wave in the recently concluded Google I/O 2016. And to say that the future is here is an understatement. It is more like – the future is here, there and everywhere! (let us have that one minute pause in remembrance of The Beatles).
Sundar Pichai puts it very bluntly short of apocalyptic; “Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away.” And when someone like Google’s CEO opens his mouth, we better not blink an ear.
The battle will no longer be about devices, but about the experience that computing technology provides.
Moving forward, consumers will be presented with a non-physical product and giant tech companies will scramble to provide “user experience” to a whole new level; in ways that we have never even imagined.
Who knows, we can now look forward to going home more than ever before. And that presents a scary future for the office space environment. But more about that in the next 2-3 years. This piece is all about the astoundingly, mind-boggling innovations that tech companies such as Google are coming up with.
When the phone became smart, the whole world seemed to move light years ahead of itself. Then comes the wearable technologies which just practically puts an “x” in everyone’s foreheads. And now the very place we take refuge from all the noise of the outside world; tech or not is being redesigned. Smart homes – what in the world is this?
But first, let me be clear about this. Amazon has been doing this for the consumers since last year via their Amazon Echo. And Google being Google. Just googled its way to creating their version of the Amazon device.
And with Google’s voice activated remote control, our home us we know it is coming to a new phase – interactive world.
So what does this present in content production? We are presented with a more difficult task of getting people’s attention, the “consumer products” that we know and used to imagine becomes less interesting and less engaging. And we have to think of better ways to “bring the content” to the homes of our audience.
It simply means – content design needs to start to align itself with a new level of experience for the consumer.
Is it time to say goodbye to blogging then?
I hope not.