Software 2.0 as an art form

I was thinking about a weird concept of software 2.0 as an art form. This idea contributes to my innate artsy faith. Software 2.0, other than the traditional perceived software concept, is a combination of functional, emotional and religional experience existence. It can be a piece of architecture, a graphic design, an app, or a game, it has something to do with traditional software because it's essentially "helpful" and "smart", it has something new there, I'm not sure what, but maybe you can help me figure out.

The Functional Goal: Zero UI

Design is to unfold the nature of a system. A good UI design fits to human's ever-changing flowing mental model. It needs to be simple, transparent and personalized. It is so good that the user barely realize it's presence. It's task-oriented, and barrier-blurred.

The Emotional Goal: Software as an art form

Software 2.0 is a medium, a utility, a tool, a self-transcending stage and a life-enhancing system, it's functional and experiential, it can be a web app, a desktop app, a game, a media, a SNS...or all together. By using it repeatedly, user appreciate it's very beauty in presence, it encompasses multiple dimensions and crosses mediums. Software literally becomes a new art form.

 

The Religion Goal: Ritual

Software 2.0 turns mundane experience into a ritual. Users become both the experience consumers and creators. Software usage becomes a luxurious behavior, and a religion element is needed.

 

Software 2.0 UI design needs collaboration

User experience design and user-centered thinking immerses into every aspect of human life, it encompasses and involves designers from different fields, architects, fashion designers, graphic designers,filmmakers,game designer, and mostly importantly, it needs the users' proactive participation.

Because this idea is pretty weird, I'm afriad my peers will take me as a freak, so I won't publish on my main blog. But at the same time, I have an awesome idea today, and I talked with a couple of friends of mine, we all like this idea of building a platform for young designers from difference fields who concerns about user experience and user-centered design to express their crazy ideas. We all believe young people are leaders of next generation, and this platform can help design idea spreading, design education and open-source design. It'll be a web app that allows any passionate designers publish their voice of design, it may incorproate twitter, but it should be sophisticated enough to promote free and professional thinking. 

So I quickly gathered a bunch of graduate students friends today, from Harvard architecture design school, Yale University graphic design program, MIT Media Lab, IIT industry design program, Stanford design program, CMU HCI and Interaction design program, USC landcaping program, and USC film/animation program. It's very interesting to find our ideas about human experience are so different, often contradicting, but interestingly contradicted.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited. Forgive my mis-spelling english words, I'll fix them later.

Comments

[JenovaChen]

It seems that all these categories fall into the realm of art under interactive media.

[wei zhou]

And that's why I need your expertise in terms of interactive media - I barely know anything about it. That's surely a shame for being with an interaction design major.