The future of media is non-human audiences

It’s time to develop experiences outside of the species. Seal with it.

If there’s anything the 2020 quarantines have taught me is that humans are increasingly stuck in rigid behaviors and rigidly defined media platforms many of us are going through the same user experiences over and over again, day in, day out. (Zoom fatigue anyone?)

Even though these activities are useful, they’re not exactly sustaining our emotional and mental needs effectively — and they have diminishing returns. No one cares about new Facebook when the only thing anyone is going to do on Facebook is Facebook.

What IS effective? Cat videos on the internet, Livestreams of aquariums, eagles and bears. These are the shining lights that keep humans sane, that and actual animal interactions and human relationships — but those don’t monetize or scale well. It’s time to look outside our species for new media inspiration. It’s time to build experiences for the biggest audience out there: Animals.

Human Centered Design is so 2019.

One of the things I ask students when I’m teaching experience design is to consider who their audience is. These days you can develop experiences for humans, optimize content for algorithms, or try and structure a product that fits into an existing economic format — you get to…