Desap’s encounter on the UX Crunch Manchester Meets BBC: UXmas Crunch.
Voice tech is gaining some serious traction in our industry. And not just in design, but in the lives of everyday people. With devices such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa (sorry Siri), 2019 and beyond is looking to be the year Voice takes its claim.
A few of our team members went to check out this exciting technology amongst other contenders in the design hemisphere, at the UX Crunch Manchester Meets BBC: UXmas Crunch. Let’s take a look.
First of all….. Wow!
I think this cat meme sums up how we felt, from the talks, the demonstrations to the activities that we encountered.
We have to appreciate all the great minds at the BBC, and how their digital sector is growing in all different areas of UX Design. We were impressed by the levels of investment in technology to benefit the future.
👏 We applaud you!
While it’s still fresh, we wanted to hear from our team members individually on their experience at the event and their thoughts on the future of Voice and AR/AI Technology.
UI / UX Designer
“ I found the event to be eye-opening, as well as educational! I never understood how far AI /AR Technology has come. I’m not too keen on the feel of AI /AR, I’m not too sure if I ‘trust’ the software yet — if I don’t trust it how do we expect the public to?!
However, I’m definitely excited about the aspect of voice technology and how smart devices are helping the likes of people with different accessibilities. Every user is different, different needs, differences from culture backrounds and social backgrounds. So it was interesting to hear talks on Cognitive Design and how this could be developed into helping others in all areas of life.
I found the workshop task, enlighting and yet difficult, as a designer I’m not comfortable to not seeing something physical (visual) in front of me. So it was hard to grasp that concept of how voice devices communicate with the user.
To sum up the event, I’d have to say I enjoyed the talks, from each individual speaker, let alone the workshop of voice technology. I feel big things are heading in the world of UX Design, Voice tech is definitely going to be a big one in 2019… So watch this space.”
Marketing Executive
“UX Crunch was incredible! With everything going digital, it’s hard not to talk about technology and design when talking about marketing: everything is tied together, probably more than ever before.
Even though the event was more UX specific, it also left me with some marketing related questions:
SEO of the future — Maybe this future is not that far-away. Optimisation for voice powered devices is a challenge of the present. However, it’s still in very early stages. Brands are still testing how they can optimise their presence within the AI context. For example, with Voice, conversations and search queries tend to be longer and more specific. How are brands going to position themselves?
Data complexity — Data is gold but only when used in the right way. BBC’s Creative Director Blaise Galinier brilliantly showed the challenges behind all their metadata. It’s clear that large organisations creating huge amounts of data find it hard to measure it all. However, they know it’s the way to go forward in order to continuously improve their offer to its customers. Companies may have the capability to generate data, but without the right infrastructures and procedures, it’s almost impossible to analyse the data properly and make decisions based upon that.
Personalisation — It’s unquestionable; Everything is becoming more and more personalised. AI and Machine Learning plays a big part in that by offering tailored content in real-time to its users. Alexa is a great example of a device that does just that. This means that marketing will need to transform its targeting basics. It’s not the ‘one size fits all’ type of content anymore and marketing specialists are challenged to create advanced targeting tactics in order to cope with these devices. Not all touchpoints will be the same, marketing funnels will be complex and if not carefully planned and measured, this could lead to confusion and bad business.”
UI / UX Designer
“The talk was definitely insightful. Seeing a company the scale of the BBC, with the global reach it has and the diverse audiences it has to cater to, having basic UX principles in place was impressive to see. They seem to be a company in transition, moving a lot of old analog principles and methodologies aside to embrace digital foundations in a digital landscape. Their use of AR/VR to find creative solutions for accessibility was a big positive, as they seem to have a strong focus on inclusion and diverse participation.
The Voice command workshop was incredibly insightful. Building products that only use voice commands is a new field I’m getting into, so it was a nice little window into its possibilities. Designing something with no visual interface (The speaker called it “no-d”, which I thought was a bit clever), but has to function as an app, with a more human nuance (the way it engaged with the user, the commands it was able to understand etc) was surprisingly challenging and exciting at the same time. It added a new perception for me in my design thinking. Sometimes as designers we can be too assumptive with our design decisions, choosing obvious step-by-step user flows, when in reality the way people will use our products can vary greatly. It encourages deeper collaboration and challenges creative thinking, both things I enjoy greatly.”
Summary
From the event, our team concluded that Voice Technology will bring a lot of new design challenges, whilst opening up tons of exciting opportunities for business as well as consumers alike. If you are looking to innovate your company’s way of approaching consumers, we’d be happy to help you explore what advantages you can find through Voice Technology.
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About the author:
Desap System Solutions is a leading Manchester based smart device technology and mobile software solutions specialist.
Drop us a line at info@desap.co.uk
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