We’ve all wondered what the future will look like at some point in our lives. From flying cars, comparable to Doc Brown’s Delorean DMC-12, to Ex-Machina style artificial intelligence. These dreams now don’t seem like such a distant reality. As computers become more powerful, clever and sophisticated, the rate of technological growth is rapidly increasing. To accommodate these new and evolving technologies there is now a high demand for content to become more interactive and engaging.

The market has become over-saturated with static content such as books and white papers and consumers are beginning to tire of reading the same old articles. In a recent report conducted by DemandGem, a staggering 91% of consumers stated they prefer interactive, visual content that can be accessed on demand. As a result, businesses are beginning to increase their marketing spend to support content creation.

So what’s the cure for the increasing level of content fatigue? Interactive content. The introduction of HTML5 and CCS3 over the last couple of years has stretched the boundaries of web design and contrary to popular belief, the design of your website could impact your organic search rankings.

Google are constantly adapting and evolving their complex search algorithms. This has recently seen keyword stuffing eschewed with more sophisticated metrics, which places a high emphasis on unique, valuable and well-designed content.

This is where interactive design is beginning to excel. Eye-catching, engaging design that captivates its audience falls in line with what Google will be rewarding as part of their algorithm shift. As the digital world grows increasingly stronger, it’s of no doubt that interactivity is going to become more and more important. After all, it’s what ultimately separates digital and print content. Should you choose to ignore interactive design due to the higher cost of implementation or larger timescales, you are at risk of falling behind the competition and losing ranking positions. So now really is the time to start creating truly engaging, interactive content.

For non-web based content, consider 2016 the year that Virtual Reality (VR) finally arrives. The idea of putting on a virtual reality headset to submerse yourself in a virtual world may sound old hat (think back to 1995 and you may remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy), but developments in this immersive technology have given it a fresh lease of life.

This year has already seen the consumer launch of the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR and with the HTC Vive, Microsoft Hololens, and Sony PlayStation VR set to arrive throughout the year, virtual reality is set for a mainstream explosion. VR’s ability to transport you into another realm and take you completely out of your comfort zone is only limited to the developers creation of such content.

There’s no doubt that VR has the potential to change the world we live in, as we learnt during our recent visit to the Inition demonstration studio. But the next few years will reveal a lot about the rate of adoption for such technologies and will give a good indication of its longevity. We think that VR, this time, may be here for the long haul. Or could it fall to the same fate as the Google Glass or Segway, which initially created a huge amount of excitement but gathered stigmas that quickly pushed them aside? Only time will tell, watch this space.