Disciplines of Rich User Experience

We are at the crest of a new era in software – the first phase was about data which included data types, data storage, data modeling, data base management, and the like. The second phase was about process which included graphical user interfaces, navigations, usability, and the like. The third and upcoming era is about user experience whose wings spans over every aspect and every touchpoint between a user and an application. User Experience is a multi-disciplinary field that includes usability, interaction design, navigation design, information design (information architecture, content design, and media design), visual design (graphical design, animation design, and layout design), and sound design.
The ―rich‖ in “Rich User Experience‖ spans its wings on all aspects of a graphical interface from functions to forms. For a user experience to be rich, it has to be stunning, compelling, engaging, enticing, entertaining, exciting, connected, dynamic, alive, immersive, interactive, collaborative, responsive, intuitive, unobtrusive, portable, customizable, delightful, and personable, with self-explanatory labels, logical taxonomy, flexible ontology, intuitive navigation, social features, remembrance, intelligence, elegance, and multi-lingual capabilities.
With wider adoption of broadband, more computer power, advanced graphic monitors of all sizes, along with standards will help diffuse RUE into the mainstream. Such wide spread adoption will force RUE to eventually command a formal new discipline in experience design, similar to how industrial design started in the late 1920’s as a melting pot of different specialties with no standards, but subsequently evolved into a formal discipline.