I attended a fantastic presentation at the IA Summit called “Clues to the Future: What the users of tomorrow are teaching us today“. Andrew Hinton, of Vanguard Group, was behind this eye-opening talk. The theme of his talk was, as experience designers and marketers, what can we learn from children, teenagers, and young adults who are spending a significant amount of time online on sites like MySpace, playing games like Everquest and World of Warcraft or living virtual lives in places like Second Life and There. The point being, these sites and virtual worlds feature complex and stimulating interfaces that young users are navigating with ease.

Mr. Hinton points out; the kids playing these games today will become the CEOs and leaders of tomorrow. They’re going to expect applications and tools to be able to give them all of the information they need, at-a-glance, to know about their business. Today’s games feature heads-up displays that provide detailed information about everything going on around them. This rich information is then quickly processed and synthesized in order to make informed decisions about what needs to be done next.

Click on the image above to see what I’m talking about. At any given moment, there are a dozen things going on that is being processed by the user.

What are the implications for the future of experience design?