10: Gridless Customer Experience
The author mentions e-mail as a specific way in which our lives as consumers has changed. Over the past two decades, it's gone from being virtually unknown, to something that's been checked infrequently, to an always-on companion that's constantly demanding attention.
(EN: scanning forward, this chapter looks like a collection of random observations rather than a systematic approach to considering customer experience and the culture of the digital age, which is probably a larger topic than can be covered in a single chapter, anyway.)
Your Inbox Needs to Change for the Better
The author mentions his own "inbox mix," which may be more or less diverse than other consumers. It consists of "normal" e-mail, web-based e-mail (Google mail), Instant messaging (Skype and SMS), alerts and messages from social networking (Facebook and Twitter), discussion threads (RSS feeds, blog comments, Google Wave).
The nature of messages varies: there's a ton of spam to be filtered, but even excluding that, he receives work messages, messages from friends, reminders and notices from businesses, meeting requetst, task reminders, comments about comments he's made, and so on.
Organization all of this is a challenge: having to check several inboxes or message threads, and organize the information he receives from multiple sources. What's needed is a way to bring together all these messages and better organize them.
Ironically, he mentions Google Wave as a "new initiative" that he sees as being an excellent solution for bringing all of this together and organize it. (EN: no point in going over all the detail he provides, as Google Wave is now dead.)
A World without Travel Agents and Stockbrokers, but with Virtual Agents
In terms of interacting with businesses, the author asks the rhetorical question: "When was the last time you went to see a travel agent or a stockbroker?" In the present age, customers use the internet to self-service, making such professions unnecessary - though a few such professionals remain in business, they have fewer customers, and generally charge a higher fee for their service.
The author mentions the notion of "Virtual Agents," software programs that perform the tasks of expert humans - which makes it even easier. You need not learn to trade a stock or book a flight, but communicate in plan language to an intelligent program that "I need to fly to Chicago on June 6" and it will do the work.
To some degree, Web sites attempt to do this through making services easy to use, but the author envisions an "avatar" that operates independently of a specific company or Web site - one agent that will engage various providers to fetch what you need in any area, possibly powered by voice recognition.
(EN: to date, experiments with avatars have failed, either in terms of poor functionality, or a lack of trust by customers who'd rather do it themselves than trust a program to do it for them. My sense is that the first has fed the second. I'll grant that it's possible to overcome the shortcomings and develop a reliable and trustworthy "digital butler" you can speak to as if it were a person - but I'm less sanguine than the author at the notion it will happen soon.)
Touch Interface
Touch-screen technology has improved significantly in recent years. It's not uncommon for ATMs to enable the customer to touch the display screen itself, rather than a separate keypad or buttons, to perform transactions. And there have been innovations in recent years (Microsoft Surface, Apple iPhone) that use touch in innovative ways to interact with information in ways that a keyboard and mouse does not accommodate.
Looking forward, the author considers the haptic interface - a device that can be moved in three dimensions. While this has been unsuccessful in the past, some degree of haptic control have been provided, and accepted, in devices such as the Wii game station and the iPhone.
Should this continue, it's likely that in as little as a decade, and even traditional desktop computers will be accessed with a haptic device and/or a touch screen rather than a keyboard and mouse. (EN: This seems a bit ambitious, but I suspect it's more likely - though the first few generations will probably have to include a "virtual keyboard" facsimile until a better method is discovered for entering text and consumers learn to use it).
Computing in the Cloud
"Cloud" computing is another notion that has gotten off to a rocky start, but which may be revisited in future. Fundamentally, it means that data and applications are not stored on the device (computer), but are stored on the internet, where they may be accessed by any device connected to the network.
(EN: The author goes a bit too far in his advocacy, suggesting that the traditional PC will fall from use and people will instead use devices and net-books. He's not alone in this level of enthusiasm, and given media sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube, it seems to be likely people will feel the need to have less data on a local device. However, this really hasn't caught on for most kinds of data, as evidenced by the failure of Apple's Mobile Me", not has it caught on for applications, as evidenced by the failure of Google Docs. My sense is that the market is presently embracing remote storage only for files they wish to share, not private data, and while applications are provisioned over the network, they are installed locally. The notion of true cloud computing is an interesting theory, and may eventually become possible and accepted by users, but at present, it doesn't seem to be going that way.)
Widgets
The author is also a fan of transactional "widgets." These small niche applications for performing specific tasks did not catch on for desktop computing, but given that their small footprint suits mobile devices, they are experiencing resurgence in interest.
Of particular interest to banks is supporting third-party widgets, where a developer has created a payment application into which the user can enter their bank account information and use the widget as a method of making payments. This notion is perceived by banks as a threat, especially to security, but it's likely that customers will adopt third-party widgets rather than utilize ones created by individual institutions. The author insists they must overcome this defensive position or risk losing customers to banks that support their applications of preference.
(EN: And again, I'm generally in agreement, but find that the author's use of melodrama and hyperbole undermines his credibility. Banks and financial institutions have largely been supportive of third-party applications, such as Quicken, as well as third-party sites, such as Mint, by enabling their customers to export data or provide access to financial accounts, and I expect they will support widgets as well, provided they gain popularity. However, the implication that there will be an exodus of customers from ay bank that refuses to support the latest gizmo is entirely unfounded.)
Interacting with Your Environment
The author concedes that this notion is "a little bit out there," but he's fascinated by technology that recognizes objects and attempts to associated data with that object - for example, to see a person's face, recognize them as an individual, and pull up a dossier of information about them.
Google is attempting to do so with an experimental technology called "Google Goggles" that analyzes photographs, and it's theoretically possible to extend this technology to recorded video, and eventually to real-time video, creating "smart glasses" that will display associated information in real-time to a person who uses them.
The result is a notion called "augmented reality" (AR) that adds a layer of computer information over a real-time display, enabling the viewer to see additional information. One example shown uses an iPhone to view an apartment building, and near each window is a call-out showing the name of the person who lives there. Another example is using the iPhone as you walk through a store, showing a layer of pop-up information that indicates the price of items from online vendors, and the ability to launch a widget to buy online rather than on the spot.
(EN: Ironically, the idea the author concedes as the most "out there" is actually the most feasible an the most useful- it's not too far a stretch from current technology, though the ability to recognize objects accurately in real time is a bit much to ask of processing speed of mobile devices and the capabilities of software. The core problem is information overload - you can have several pop-ups on every object in sight, and this would be so overwhelming as to be useless)