Trends and Trajectory

As 2009 comes to a close I’m sitting in a nice, comfy coffee shop, working on some code for an iPhone app I wanted to release a couple weeks ago. I’m not going to be hard on myself. The Holiday season came upon us and there became more important things like family, friends, and feasts. This evening I’ve spent some time reflecting on my journeys over the last 12 months and begin figuring out where 2010 might take me.

I’ve pretty much immersed myself in mobile development the last couple months as some exciting new projects have hit the desk. It’s changed my view of computing. I don’t think much is new, but the added perspective is certainly important. For the sake of pointing them out, something needs to be said about the tremendous growth in a few trends – the ones that will continue explosive growth well into the future.

Web

It’s no surprise that SaaS (software as a service / “pay for play”) has made it pretty big, especially with companies like 37Signals leading the way in team collaboration. Tons of companies are copying the business plan because it can work tremendously well. SaaS is quite a game changer over the old boxed software model. The ubiquity of the net makes it easy for customers to connect to a service, do what they need to do, and leave without ever thinking about all the dirty parts of actually maintaining a computer. There are tons of other great benefits to SaaS, but I’ll just have to save it for later.

UI

It’s no surprise that we’re finally arriving at the Renaissance of user interface design. Tools and information have become improved enough that instead of spending a ton of time writing code, and more time designing appealing interfaces. We see this in both desktop apps and the web.

Platforms

Mobile is big. It’s not going away. This is not about that. Apple’s iPhone has revolutionized our concept of the application development model. It has shown us how apps that do one or two things, but do them well, have taken the place of monolithic apps that try to do everything, but only sort-of well. I don’t think the iPhone can actually take credit for this, but it is probably among the largest driving factors in this mentality shift . We also see similar shifts in online tools (37Signals with their collaboration suite) and desktop apps (Compare the beautiful Billings.app from MarketCircle to Intuit’s Quicken and Quickbooks).

Beyond

I never promised anything revolutionary, but when you look at the horizon it’s pretty clear to see where the current trends will continue to expand into meaningful user experiences.

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