I got in touch with a friend recently, kinda randomly. He’s an incredible motion-graphics designer, and I’ve always admired his skills. He recently wowed me with not only a beautiful short-reel, but some User Interface work he’d been doing for mobile devices. I was surprised: our worlds were converging in a way I hadn’t anticipated. He works in Maya, Lightwave 3D, and AfterEffects. Not really software geared toward traditional "graphic designers" or "UX Professionals." I had always been able to see a natural progression for a designer to go from building static web comps, to a designer who codes a bit for the web, then maybe starts feeling comfortable with some backend stuff, and then moves to working in WPF and Silverlight. And once you got into working with WPF and Silverlight, your world of interaction-design opened up – anything was possible. While this was my path, most of those that I generally have worked with came from one side or the other: development or design.

But my friend had approached the same goal as my trajectory leads me, but from a different tangent. Coming from the world of 3-d and motion-graphics, I can see a whole different way of thinking about a user-interface. The way he approaches the problem is significantly different in one particular way: the z-axis.

Having come from the world of print, originally, and then developing those skills to the web, I had been ingrained in grids of many sorts, but always 2-d grids. Yes, one could always simulate 3-dimensional space, and to a large degree that’s still true – we’re still only simulating 3-d, but in a very different way.3 In many ways, what I mean by "the z-axis” is even more than the 3-dimensionality that we’re now able to reliably replicate, but it’s also the speed at which we can move through new spaces, the fidelity of the environment, the gravity of the objects with which we interact. We’re able to harness the ineffable in ways we had only seen in movies and books.

The iPhone, Microsoft Surface, and new touch-screen computers, for instance, are changing the way we interact with screens. The devices themselves are responsive enough, and deliver enough visual resolution to allow next-to limitless possibilities. Always-on Internet connectivity allows us access to the world’s databases at once, and new software technologies allow us to use that data in unimaginable ways: Photosynth, Surface and Windows Live Maps mashups, and even games, … endless of variety of ways to connect with others, express yourself, and create new, meaningful experiences.

I recently ran across Flower, a game for the Playstation3 that really seemed to bring this point home. It’s a simple game – only from what I’ve been able to glean from the video (full disclosure: I own an Xbox) – where you are petals in the wind, flying through grasses, over mountains, on the surface of water. It’s a dream I’ve had since a little kid.

Or how about Princess Leia’s holographic message to Obi Wan Kenobi. Did it really appear that much different than the super-cool holographic monster in Tokyo?

So, I guess the summary of what I’m saying is this: I’m excited. I’m excited to be living in the 21st Century. True, no flying cars yet, but we’re getting there. And, as designers, developers, and creators of software, and sites, we’re at a real stage of potential genesis of immersive, new types of experiences. And what truly excites me is the potential for the crossover between art and science … just see the game above, for an example.

So, thanks Michael. I appreciate the inspiration …

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