You’re kidding yourself if you think we’re still in the Information Age. There is so much information out there that if you’re like me, you spend more time going through clutter than you do relevant content. What I choose to consume has to rank high on engagement (even if it’s just for me) otherwise, what’s the point? We’re all strapped for time, we’re all mobile, and I’m willing to bet that the information age has made most of us acutely (or severely) ADD. So are you ready to come to terms with what Tara Walpert Levy calls the Participation Age?
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If you work in any industry (digital or otherwise) where what you create or offer eventually makes its way to someone else, the Age of Engagement should matter to you. You need to discover new ways of using design, technology and content to create and present ideas.
From a design perspective, you need to stop constraining ideas to what Luke Wroblewski refers to as the canvas. Ideas need to be medium-agnostic for them to be engaging. This translates to unearthing inventive ways to approaching information hierarchy as well as systemizing guided and disorganized user experiences.
Technology and engagement in our modern time are more intertwined than ever. From the private sector to the public sector, technology plays an influential role in engagement. There’s little doubt that we need to transition to technologies and processes that are better suited for engagement. Not only should our systems be built on the responsive philosophy, they should embrace the inevitability that scalability is not an option but a prerequisite.
As the primary cause of clutter, content and its approach, whether curated or original, needs to be re-conceptualized. The role of storytelling in engagement is hard to dispute. Great storytelling in the Age of Engagement depends on the willingness of the source to embrace participation from its audience.