Over +1000 people took their seats for the second time, ready for another day filled with Innovation and Design @ #EXF19.
Fellow designers from around the world gathered at the Circo Price in Madrid’s city center awaiting for our next “fighter” to take center stage! Day two, couldn’t have started better…
Beware of agent spies!
Chris Noessel exposed his very interesting theory on Agentive tech (AI that does things on users’ behalf) vs Automation (which seeks to minimize human interaction), and the dilema designers face when being asked by corporations to turn agents such as Roomba into “spies”! Agents and AI devices are increasingly handling more and more of our personal data and not always using this in the users’ best interest, but rather to favour third party agreements and other undercover assignments we are not aware of… Beware of the spies!“Let’s start designing a better world!”
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Are we ready for AI?
Turn for Ana Molina to talk to us about the work she is carrying out for Aura by Telefonica, and how design is contributing towards their digital transformation. Ana says that in the future we will be relegating all interactions to conversation.Ana also you touched on design ethics and how we should offer a truely transparent vision of what we will be doing with the data as well as giving users the sense of control of the experience, especially as users are not yet ready to talk to voice assistants.
“Users are still not ready to interact with voice”
Designing for play.
Edwina Portocarrero was to follow with a livestream presentation from NYC! Her exposition on “What is PLAY” and how we can design for Play was one of my personal favourites of the day. “Play is in a way, the purest form of interaction – unadulterated by any kind of function or finality”. Adventure Playgrounds and Junkyard Playgrounds allow people to interact as equals… they’re a space for integration where function follows form. Play is inclusive!“Play is the purest form of interaction”
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Education and inclusive technology
We moved from PLAY to EDUCATION with Neby Teklu, from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Where she stated that we should take Inclusive Design as a habit, as every experience we create has the potential to include or exclude people. We need to design technology that works for all students. Designing products, devices, services or environments for people who experience disabilities. And Neby went on to stress the word “disabilities” and it’s meaning: A disability is not about what your body can and can’t do, it’s about your relationship between you and your environment.Our role “enables and disables users”
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Designing for emotion
Next up was Andreas Markdalen from Frog, with his talk on Designing for Emotion. If before we said that funtion follows form, here Andreas was highlighting that “Form follows Emotion”! With some cool examples of the 50 year Frog trajectory in the design world, such as their collaboration with Steve Jobs in Apple’s initial days. And stating how only working with the right people & stakeholders you can really drive change! So try to work with organizations that are willing to take risks.“Let’s make the world a better place to be in.”
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AI for personalised experiences
Allie Vogel from Booking.com took the stage to discuss Practical Machine Learning, and how we can leverage AI to create principles that will allow us to design personalised experiences. Through taking on a “testing and experimentation culture”, transparency why we are collecting data and remembering that context is key! What works for one does not necessarily fit all.“Allow your users to be in control”
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After a great lunch getting to know and sharing opinions with all our speakers, it was time for the “final rounds” at Experience Fighters. (Bell rings!)
Irrational users
The stage erupts again with our next speaker who is full of vitality. Pablo Stanley from Invision shares with #EXF19 his perception on users and how they are not rational or good at making decisions. Sometimes we create experiences thinking that our users don’t make mistakes or believing they are “rational” human beings… But real life experiences shows us that we are not. We are creatures that like to take shortcuts (95% of our decisions) and we rely on our memory, so when we give users too many options (Netflix popped up as an example that we spend more time “choosing” rather than “viewing”!) they struggle to make a decision. So let’s help users make easy decisions, give them less options to avoid uncertainty, remove obstacles and anxiety… but remember we are easily influenced so, manipulate responsibly!“Humans are irrational, but predictable”
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The UX of Fortnite!
Celia Hodent explained to us her UX framework for the video game industry, which have specific challenges as we want to make sure thay are engaging and fun at the same time.
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Our perception is subjective, attention is scarce and memory fallible… so we must challenge these facts by giving our gamers small, medium and large goals whilst adding rewards to achieve best practice usability + engage-ability.
“When you learn about something your brain connects!!!”
Estrella Galicia, innovative beer
It was a pleasant surprise to hear Ignacio Rivera’s fresh story about how to innovate and be different in a centenary family business Hijos de Rivera (Estrella Galicia beer brands).So “what’s innovation” he asks… “It’s the culture of being different”, said Ingnacio. It has to be within the company’s culture, you have to enjoy yourself, learn and have a “trial and error” mindset. Dreaming is free, and usually is profitable in the end. So be generous to your clients, have a positive impact in society, and search for what is your unique recipe”.
“We want to be the most loved beer, not the most sold.”
Designing voice user interfaces
Google’s Cathy Pearl gave us an inspiring talk about how we take many of our daily routine activities for granted: channel surfing, texting a friend, playing your favorite song, arguing with your partner… but they’re not possible for everyone!
twitter.com/chrisnoessel
It’s the end of typing! The next Billion mobile users will rely on video and voice, that’s a lot of AI interfaces we’re going to need to design. So we need to understand how voice can help users, and take into account that we need to create voice technology that will cover transcripts, and work for “uncommon speech” too, not everyone has the same voice.
“It’s the end of typing!”
Are you making sense?
Elizabeth Pastor from Humantific, gave us her company theory on how to produce Change and Transformation through Sense Making. One of the keys she says is to rethink, Design Thinking and adapt it to a future which has already arrived. A future of increasing complexity, automation and change, we have an exciting opportunity to excel on what makes us human, such as Creativity, Design, Collaboration, Communication, SenseMaking, Innovation, Problem Solving and Adaptability… amongst others. All of these secrets and more were revealed in her Humantific Design Framework 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0.“How might we be at the table (and lead), before products are decided/created”
twitter.com/chrisnoessel
The designer’s role
Humberto Matas from Designit, presented his vision on how automation and global design practice is shaping the role of future designers. If we look at two key phases of the design process (uncertainty and certainty), designers will surely have more impact on the strategic, ideation and definition phase (uncertainty) than in the design and implementation phases (certainty) where we will see systematic design methods take over many of the tasks especially when working at global scale and performance oriented.
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But don’t despair designers! We are now taking over many leadership roles and the craftsmanship can not be transferred, nor will it accelerate the process. Keep in mind always the intention … “why are we doing this?” and keep up your personal battle by embracing change.
“Deliver craftmanship + intention in your work”
See you all next year @ #EXF20 !!!
Another day packed with lots of good energy from a sold out crowd brings another year of Experience Fighters to it’s conclusion,. Design Ethics, Playgrounds and Personalised Experiences… Are we really ready for AI… or How are Voice User Interfaces Changing the World? Were just some of the topics we touched at this year’s event.The final talk was followed by “happy hour” drinks by Estrella Galicia and an amazing live concert at the #EXF19 After-hours Party to conclude the attendees experience! Who could ask for more???
I’m sure we will all remember this as a great two day event in Madrid, that brought together +1000 from 23 countries around the world. A chance to meet fellow professionals and meet international colleagues, learn from each other and challenge our constantly evolving industry.
Looking forward to seeing you all again next year @ #EXF20 !!! 😉
