The tools and platforms are finally starting to emerge to support multi-platform user experience design, where multiple digital elements are combined using wireless networks to create an experience greater than the sum of its parts.

Nokia’s Qt platform, acquired from Trolltech a couple of years ago, combines authoring tools and runtime environments across multiple mobile OS, home entertainment systems and digital appliances.

David Almstrom of Nokia’s Qt team showed me this concept UI for in-car systems, demonstrating how each interface can be optimised for the individual platforms, but the overall experience provides a cohesive approach.

One of the key take-aways from our MEX Conference in December 2009, entitled ‘Enhancing the user experience in a multi-platform world’, was the lack of viable tools for architecting these kind of multi-channel UIs. It seems they are now starting to arrive, courtesy of Qt and others, such as Sun.

I also spent some time looking at the Sun Java FX designer and developer suite – I’ll provide some further info on this later.