Six memos for 2015

Here are six ideas that I think we’ll see and hear a lot about in 2015. Some of them are already creeping up the buzzword charts but before they get totally ‘rinsed’ here’s a few thoughts about them.

Resilience

I think this one is going to be a biggie, least of all because I can’t stop using it. For me, last year was the year of ‘responsive’ design, you couldn’t move for discussion and comment on it. I’m as guilty as the next man for this. But this year I feel that the discussion will shift, it will move from the methodologies back to the core needs. One of the main things that responsive design gives us is more resilience. Designs no longer brake so readily, for so many people — they responsively change, becoming more flexible and accommodating — becoming more resilient across a wider range of contexts and situations. The idea of resilience is already being widely discussed in both public sector and corporate strategy, reflecting a larger shift in thinking from rigid structures to dynamic, smart systems. We all want resilience, as we don’t want things to fail and crumble away. We don’t want to have to continuously tear it down and start again. We want to weather the storms and ride through rough and unexpected as we’ve come to accept that the unknown unknowns will always be there, sitting just outside of our view, just beyond our models. We know that the key is not to rigidly plan for the ‘event’ but rather to train and build our systems (physical, electronic, social, financial, et al) to quickly recover and adapt, to build in resilience.

Ambient persuaders

I’ve long been a fan of ambient signifiers in design systems, and I believe that the notion of things quietly guiding us is going to be a lot more common and lot more talked about this year. Architects and designers have long used ambient techniques to ‘guide’ the people engaging with their systems. Sometimes in architecture these aren’t so subtle and feel brutal or oppressive such as using scale to intimidate. Other times they provide that all important hint, that almost invisible signal that draws you in the right direction. The first example of this I came across was courtesy of Peter Morville, in his brilliant book Ambient Findability. He talked about how the chimes on the Tokyo metro were ambient signifiers for each of the metro lines — subtle hints to help commuters sense which train is at the platform. Many of these ambient (even subliminal) techniques track all the way back to propaganda and advertising, nudging people to think, feel or behave in the ‘desired’ way. For more the new use of ambient is not quite so sinister as it’s more about raising those hidden persuaders just into view but still leveraging all their power. With the interest in behavioural economics, the idea of ‘nudging’ people to make better decisions has become an acceptable concept for policy makers and designers alike. The differentiator here is that it’s about encouraging people to do something that they may not want to do in order to gain longer term benefits for themselves or society as a whole. What makes it ambient is that it’s not a heavily enforce rule or policy. It’s merely part of the context that the activity is taking place in or inherent to the way the process for that activity has been constructed. It’s all about a hint, a nudge, a suggestion to do it ‘this way’ over ‘that’ — it’s the designed path of least friction, or that annoying notifier that simply must be cleared. These nudges and hints are Buckminster-Fullers ‘trim tab’ the tiny element that moves the enormous ship. Behavioural design has been a hot topic for a while. With the rise is self monitoring, digital health and our algorithmic overlords, these ambient persuaders and nudgers will start to get used more and more as no want wants an artificially intelligent MS Office Clippy, nagging away at us. To discover a little more about designing for ambient signals, take a look at the brilliant work by Dan Lockton and his Design with Intent toolkit.

Ambiguity

With all the AI and algorithmic advances, the things that make us uniquely human need to be talked about a lot more. One of the incredible things humans do better than machines is dealing with ambiguity. Most UI and mechanical design is essentially an exercise in removing ambiguity so that only the single correct action is performed by the machine. But that’s mainly because of the mechanical interface (buttons, levers, GUI etc). What happens when the interface is more human, when it’s fully gestural and spoken, when we interact with the machine in the same way as we do with other people? When we talk to each other much of the intended meaning is alluded too, suggested, is based on shared understanding or is playful, subtle and deliberately full of ambiguity. Language twists and turns and morphs within the groups that use it. If you are from outside the group, the references, meanings and jokes are not always apparent or even noticed. If you have ever been the non native speaker (and the new person) sitting with a relaxed group of long term friends, you’ll know what I mean. You often don’t have the same reference points, so miss the subtlety, the miss direction and the double talk. With time you learn to spot the ambiguity and often resolve it. That’s really hard for an algorithm or machine to do, as its an open, endless space where the contexts are incredibly rich and sophisticated (potentially an entire shared cultural history which is both public and private). It’s not the closed language of a mechanical process. The communicator knows what they mean and those listening need to resolve the ambiguities to hopefully come to an understanding that at leasts aligns with what is being said. Ambiguity is everything thing beyond the order word, it’s gossip, banter and in jokes. It’s real conversation. As we talk more about machines engaging us directly and ‘thinking’ ahead to meet our needs, they need to be ready to handle ambiguity. After all when I say “I love corgis” what do I really mean?

The (unfortunate) return of the Maven

Although user/people centric design has made huge head ways over the last 5 years, there’s still a lot of push back on participatory and truly collaborative design practices. Last year really pushed hard on the empowered teams meme and the rise of hive structured organisations. But many organisations have been bitten by trying to force this on people and structures that weren’t ready. Usually this is down to mandating wholesale new ‘processes’ written in stone before they have ever beens used by the people expected to work with them. All process, no point. That belief that whatever this new project/process management is, it will save us, it will make us innovative and great. However, often where they expected innovation and rapid advances then ended up with disruption (and not in a good way), inferior products and failed teams. It’s not a fault with collaborative and empowered teams, it’s simply the process and its implementation. The thing is, I fear that these failures open the door to those who don’t believe in the team as creators and owners, and only see them as the means of production. As such it sets up the lone genius, the grand architect, or the ‘great man’ to step in and force their genius upon the rest of us. Trouble is, at best they exclude, own, mythologise and stop groups advancing and at worst they work in such isolated bubbles that they don’t ever engage with the people who may actually need whatever they make. We do need them as they occasionally have great breakthroughs, they have their black swan moments, but don’t build your company around them, don’t accept their myth. Even those who we believe are these singular geniuses almost always have their partners, teams and are never really alone. So empower all the people in your organisation to be part of doing great things, and avoid relying on the man behind the curtain. There’s no resilience with mavens.

Emotional sensing

There was a lot of talk about empathy and emotional understanding last year, especially in the product design arena. This included a healthy debate about what we mean by ‘empathy’, which included some great work defining the many facets of empathy and where and when we use them. This seemed to culminate in the release of Practical Empathy by Indi Young — a thorough analysis and methodology for using empathetic thinking in product, services and design research. I think this year we are going to hear a lot more about capturing and quantifying that type of deep emotional and qualitative information through the use of sensors. This is not really the toolkit of Indi (which is talking with people, face to face and understanding them) but rather that of the data scientist — analysing the large behavioural and sensory datasets around activities. The advances in wearable, relatively cheap, non-intrusive sensors has opened the door to accessing bio diagnostics that can be used to indicate emotional responses. It’s surprising how much can be derived from heart rate, pulse and a good understanding of the context of the activity. This has obvious benefits to researchers, and there were a few nice examples last year. Firstly one from Cities Unlocked, where they used emotional sensing to map the experiences of blind people as they travelled around the city. A true piece psychogeography if ever there was. The second was a piece about using emotional sensors to look deeper at how children play and the insights this gives toy makers such as Lego. This year we will hear more about this, including consumer services driven from the quantified self movement. Already we have pplkpr a service and product that uses sensors and context to track your emotional engagement with your ‘friends’. However the real power comes when we combine the both the face to face and the sensory data, as this gives you an incredibly rich understanding of the emotional experiences of an individual or group as well as their values and motivations. So don’t leave out the human interaction and our amazing empathetic skills when embracing the sensors and the lure of all that quantitative data.

Personal data rights

I’m not sure we have a widely accepted term for this yet, but it’s something people have been talking around for a while. It’s not about the data that others hold about us, rather it’s the data that we generate through our behaviours and activities that we could hold and own ourselves. It’s essentially the quantified self and our rights to control and own the data that we create and any data that concerns us. Part privacy, part big data, part behavourial economics and very much about the rights of use and it’s value. Recently I heard the phrase Personal Data Stores and that goes some way to describing it. It’s the total body of data generated by me and about me, it’s my digital self and the use of this data. As this debate unfolds further we need to take a look at ownership, governance and rights of the individual versus the system or entity that recorded or tracked the data. If I am the product then I’m going to also be the one ‘selling’ me — it could be time for you to request access to my API and pay for use.

So that’s my six: Resilience, Ambient persuaders, Ambiguity, Mavens, Emotional sensing and Personal data rights.

Of course I’m no sage or clairvoyant so in all likelihood they may not have even registered by this time next year, but it will be fun to come back and see.

If you like this sort of thing, but want something that’s far more than mere clickbait. Try Six Memos for the Next Millennium written by the great Italo Calvino. And yes I shamelessly stole the title — (Full text as PDF via Stanford.edu)