Design will be a critical part of the user experience and marketers will need on focus on consumer needs to create the best experiences, says Ricky Bacon, group technology director of agency Critical Mass. While technology is becoming more pervasive, the design of how humans interact with it becomes more important, he told Velocitize Talks.
The starting off point of good design is putting yourself in the customer’s place to gauge the friction and pain points, then apply technology to solve them, said Bacon. “Technology at its best is a force multiplier for good,” he said.
Bacon argues we are living in “Generation Omega,” the last batch of humans who will live without any digital augmentation. But he also forecasts that even when humans have electronic implants and other interfaces in their persons, brand swill still have to look first to user needs. “When you answer that question, the technology disappears,” he said.
Technology and data science will need to be balanced with creativity, but they are not mutually exclusive, said Bacon, who considers himself a “creative technologist.” The use of both is not a balance, but a spectrum, he said: “Lateral thinking is one the biggest things in creativity.”
Digital experience is not a generational thing, said Bacon. He used his own 3-year-old son and his wife’s 70-year-old uncle as examples, both hooked on their Amazon Echo speakers. Design doesn’t focus on a specific age range, but on making immersive experiences, he said: “You’re aiming at: How do you immerse a person where the experience disappears and that’s just where you are.”
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