Looking ahead Practical signs of the next creative wave
Incremental and together
It’s unlikely that the next creative wave will arrive in the form of a single disruptive product. As these essays have hopefully outlined, machine intelligence impacts the shape of our creative experiences via a wide body of themes. But themes don’t offer an exact blueprint or design framework to build from, and many of the questions that would need to be explored in order to create such a guideline have yet to even be asked.
What’s more likely, is that we experience transformation incrementally and together. As we continue in our own creative endeavors, we might spot one of the themes in a piece of work we see or a product we use. Sooner or later, we’ll also see them in our own work—sometimes intentionally, other times as a surprise after the work is done.
But what do themes look like? How can they be translated into more practical moments that make them easier to see and pursue?
Practical signs
As we iterate towards the next creative wave, here are some practical forms to look out for:
- Narrowing language gaps. Moments where the language of the tool is minimized in favor of the human language of our content and creative intent.
- Dynamic and contextual interfaces. Moments where experiences feel just for you, and your content and context are directly part of the interface.
- Blurred lines between creative disciplines. Moments of interaction that would normally be associated with another creative medium or discipline, but are integrated into your current experience.
- New creative file formats, and increased interaction with data and cloud-based services. Moments where creative work exists as more than a document, and products exist as more than on-device applications.
- Examples of data experience design. Moments of awareness, where a user is informed of—and even given choice in—the ways their data is active within an experience.
- Overlaps in tool-using and tool-making. Moments where creative work is made to be responsive or interactive, and is seen in different forms by different people—sometimes even leading to moments of creativity or play experienced by others.
- Creative experiences that go wider than asset creation. Moments where the tool helps with more than creating the final deliverable, and where creatives can experience more of their creative process together, all in one place.
To the next creative wave…
These moments are neither comprehensive nor definitive of the next creative wave, but they’re practical signs of our progress towards it.
Maybe you’ve seen a sign recently, or maybe, you’re working on one right now that someone else will see…