How do you name a session? You can add an Apple or in this case a Steve Jobs reference, and swear for good measure which is exactly what Tony Sy Ke did for the title of his FITC Toronto talk on the post-pc era. Tony is a designer with more than a decade’s experience working with clients like Nike, HP and Coca Cola. In 12 years his career has taken him to Vancouver, London and finally New York City, where he is currently a creative director at Digitas.

Tony started off by saying that this year alone there will be more mobile devices than there are people on the planet. As a designer he breaks down mobile into three elements contextual IQ, adoptive EQ, and connected UX.

When Tony talks about contextual IQ he is talking about the external data you access and create from your mobile device. This device is personal and the data it contains is more than just the time, date and/or location, and there is a lot of ambient data being created by your mobile device that is still not being used as effectively as it can be.

Adoptive EQ as Tony explains, "is learned data based on our own behaviour.” He refers to technologies which learn and adapt to our actions instead of the opposite, such as Amazon’s recommendation engine that learns from what you buy and makes suggestions based on that. While companies like Amazon are doing it now, Tony doesn’t believe that it is being done very well at this point.

Last, but certainly not least, he goes into connected UX which is all about the user design and experience translated from the digital to the physical world. With a PC, designers don’t have to worry about the actual device, but this flips in mobile where orientation and gestures become the primary methods of interaction.

One example Tony cited was the difference between a tablet in landscape and portrait modes. Each have their own centre of balance that may need to be considered when designing for those orientations in layout and usability.

Tony’s insights in designing for mobile were invaluable; he punctuated his own examples with informative and often funny stories that kept the audience in their seats the entire time, no small feat for a 90 minute presentation.

With the post-pc era still in its infancy what happens now will guide how we work and play online and increasingly off for years to come and the work Tony and everyone at FITC are doing now will help to lead the way.