The button is pressed. What follows is a rise and fall of bleeps, chirps, and the stuttering sounds of static interference. Then the modem connects.
We all gazed in wonderment at this new edition to our lives. Without an instruction manual and only equipped with a google-plex of possibilities. The internet is on, but now what?
Little did we know our world would change forever. A seismic shift on par with the Industrial Revolution.
Suddenly we had the ability to reach out across the world in a few clicks. We were living slap-bang in the middle of an episode of Tomorrow’s World.
One of my first projects was designing the Sony in-car entertainment website nearly 20 years ago. This was in a decade when people bought car stereos with elaborate equalizers that would write sentences on a screen like an over-excited Ceefax, and they chose to fill their boot with subwoofers under chipboard parcel shelves housing speakers the size of dustbin lids.
I recall the brief being very open and trusting. I’d just come back from art college and had about a year’s experience. I’d been playing around with a 3D package and the result was car stereos animating on demand and floating above a planet-like sphere. It looked cool if you were happy to sit through the pre-loader. I dare say if I were to search my loft I could find a zip disc with it on.
The days of flash action scripting and animating timelines soon passed. As design trends came and went, usability came to the forefront. In projects today, my time is equally spent in discovery, user research and user experience design, helping clients to create positive and inclusive user experiences. I’ve been designing in digital for 24 years I’m still excited by its possibilities.
We live in a connected world. It’s hard to think of anything we use today that hasn’t either in its creation or consumption had a dependence on the internet at some point in its life cycle.
So where does that leave us? It’s up to us. Many will use it for the greater good, some for bad. Most of us have simply integrated it seamlessly into our lives, enjoying the benefits it brings. Of course, there will be moments when we preferred aspects of life before.
As content creators, we have the desire and ability to evaluate, learn and iterate. We must steer the web in the right direction and make ethical, inclusive decisions about the work we do. As users, we must try to keep our personal data private and occasionally step away, disconnect, and breathe fresh air.