The times, they are a changing, but of course what I’ve really learned is that they never stop changing. And what I’ve noticed is the intense increase in “smart phones.” Not everybody has one, of course, especially people over 40 or so.

Kids want them, though they’re texting more than anything. But business people and tech people led this movement and it’s gotten to the point that people with iPhones and Android phones are the future.

What’s not to like? I’m doing this post on my iPhone with a WordPress app. I’ve got standard apps, plus some cool ones, none of which cost me anything-yet anyway. It’s got several of my email accounts, a browser, my contact info, calendars, and a bucket ful of stuff

It’s not capable of everything I need to do – hell, designing an interface on this would be hard to say the least. But it is the future. Whether Apple comes out with their tablet next year or the next, by the time it’s here, we’ll be ready. It won’t dominate initiallly but within a couple of years it will. And how it works will be different, just like the interface here on my iPhone.

What we need to do now is start thinking about how we’ll use them. Before the iPhone, no one would have thought of using two fingers to make things bigger or smaller, it’s not a natural or a usable interface methodology. But it works.

Similarly, when the first Mac came out magazine editors and writers all thought this “mouse” gadget was a real loser. They were wrong then and if we aren’t willing to try and develop and design new and different ways of doing things on the web and new ways of using these tools we fail as designers.

It’s going to be an interesting time. That’s both the good news and the bad.