The Internet sits at the head of a long table of technologies that have revolutionised our world. Built on top of the base Internet stack, the World Wide Web has further democratised access to information, opened hitherto closed doors to human self-expression and communication, and laid the foundations of a semantically-rich and interconnected body of knowledge the likes of which have never been seen before.

So the Internet is a Big Thing™. And, both by association as well as by personal merit, so is the web.

And yet, on most devices, the web is currently a second-class citizen confined to life inside another application: the browser.

Furthermore, as pervasive and unstoppable as its progress may seem, the web can still be lost if we don’t temper ideological extremisms that preach ‘the one web’ above all else, including pragmatism and user experience.

In this (no doubt rather controversial) session, Aral Balkan will outline the essential role of user experience in our age and demonstrate how the web must embrace user experience if it is to compete with native. Flawed ‘native is laserdisc’ analogies will be shattered as Aral demonstrates how, in the Age of User Experience, the only possible future is a native one where focused, optimised, and expertly-crafted experiences empower, delight, and thrill users.

Transcript available on fronteers.nl/congres/2011/sessions/the-future-is-native-aral-balkan