The future of mobile apps is linked to how humans have evolved and communicated with tools.
Consider an inverted pyramid as shown in the image above, with two dimensions growing simultaneously. The first being awareness and the second inter-connectivity. Awareness can also be perceived as manual vs automatic interactions with little input from user. Inter-connectivity is communication between apps or devices. When considered with the number of apps available in the market today, it is a straight pyramid with the bottom of the pyramid containing a lot more ID aware apps than the top with very few self-aware apps. When considered with the dimensions awareness and inter-connectivity, it is an inverted pyramid.
The bottom of the pyramid contains apps that are all about empowering the individual in ways to communicate, shop, purchase, consume etc. This is driven by understanding each user (business or consumer) and is largely driven by attributes of the user. For e.g. location attribute. These are the apps that we are exposed to currently. Let’s call these “Identity Awareness” apps as they are all about empowering one’s identity with the use of apps on mobile devices. The communication is similar to a hub and spoke model where the user is the hub and the apps are spokes.
How can the apps evolve from here? One possibility is where the apps shall enable “Situational Awareness”. As a small example, why should the owner of the device set their mobile on vibrate mode or silent mode? Why can’t the app figure it out by looking up my online calendars and determine the right mode? Initially, the apps may take advantage of naturally or publicly available data such as time of day, precise location of the user, etc. Aviate (getaviate.com), the company that was recently acquired by Yahoo is a good example of situation awareness. It automatically reorganizes your apps based on time of day and user behaviour with apps. Imagine the possibilities with more situation awareness eventually recognizing user cognition.
The top of the pyramid in the evolution of apps shall enable “Self-awareness”. Analogous with spirituality, self-aware apps shall realize greater interconnectedness when working with Internet of Things. In this case, not only are the apps situation-aware, but also can communicate with other peer apps and orchestrate to optimize your world in real time.
Couple this development with the trends in miniaturization and convergence of hardware devices and the future of mobile apps looks more integrated into human lives, providing naturally expressive extensions of user’s perceptions.