The future of design is uncertain, with technology gradually blurring the lines of ownership and creativity. So how do we look ahead? At the Design Thinkers track at TNW Conference, designers from all fields shared their experiences and visions for the future.
Weâve highlighted the key takeaways:
Chris Slowe, Co-founder and CTO of Reddit
Chris had large ambitions for his talk, which he shared with the crowd: âThanks for coming out so early in the morning on day two of the conference. Hopefully I can bring some delight to your hangovers.â While a tall order, his talk certainly did delight.
He discussed the recent redesign of Redditâs website. In case youâve been living under a rock, Reddit is a social network where users build communities and share their enthusiasm for their shared passions:
Weâre kind of a big deal, which most people donât realize. Weâre the fourth largest site right now in the United States, according to Alexa.
Chris walked us through the steps that he and his team took in this large overhaul. âChange can be hard, especially for Redditors,â he explained. âOur product and layout has effectively been the same for ten years, so we had to find a balance between user expectations and our vision.â
So why fix what isnât broke? Chris explained that the website wasnât as inviting for new users as it could have been, and that itâs important to update the code in order to remain clean and modern.
He goes through each step of the design process, and at the heart of it is one main theme: iteration. From start to finish, Reddit involved their users in the redesign. This not only helped them improve their product, but it maintained the core value of community that the website aims to uphold.
I think it just comes down to listening and iterating. Constant communication with users was key, because no one likes surprises. We involved our moderators and users in the beta launch, and we listened to their feedback. Of course, it wouldnât be Reddit if there werenât some pitchforks. But itâs amazing how if you actually listen to someoneâs complaints and you fix them, they become your biggest fan almost overnight.
Reddit is still busy rolling out the redesign to everyone, and Chris said that the next steps are to focus on designing for visual impairment and color blindness. âThese were core focuses from the beginning, but we felt that it was important to first build a foundation before we could properly tackle them,â he told the crowd.
You can watch his talk and learn more about the redesign steps. If youâre redesigning a website yourself, Chris shares a lot of great advice, and if youâre a Redditor like us itâs just cool to see an inside perspective.
Purna Virji, Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft
âBy 2020, the average person will have more conversations with their bot than with their spouse, according to Gartner,â Purna said. âThis means that conversational artificial intelligence is here to stay.â
Purna explained that when designed right, conversational AI can make our lives easier. While weâre already making leaps and bounds, thereâs a lot more we can do to make machines truly useful. It can also save businesses millions of dollars if designed with care.
Thatâs why Purna outlines four rules â four âCâs â for conversational AI design. The first âCâ is clarity, where language and choices need to be streamlined:
The right words can build engagement, trust, and enthusiasm for interacting with a bot. When designing language, you should write for the ear, not the eye. We talk differently than we write, so make sure that the conversation flows. When the bot gives choices to the user, you should limit it to giving three options. Any more will overwhelm the user.
Her second âCâ is character, and Purna discussed how a botâs personality can engage the user further. She also mentioned how character should be contextual â a botâs function determines whether it should be informal or not. She also warns about taking personality too far:
At the same time, the goal isnât to make the user feel like theyâre talking to a human. People are more comfortable and forgiving if they know theyâre talking to a bot.
The third âCâ is compassion, which every conversational AI should have. Purna explained that a large limitation of todayâs bots centers around a humanâs need for small talk. The bot canât always comprehend when a person goes off-script and asks personal questions, which is why she urged designers to âplan for chitchat.â
Finally, the fourth âCâ stood for correction:
Mistakes still happen, and the bot should be designed to say sorry â but not too much. It gets really annoying to hear the same âIâm sorry, I donât understandâ message each time. Luckily, thereâs more than one way to say sorry â my husband has certainly learned that.
Purna explained the âsorry, not sorryâ method, which is essentially different ways to say sorry while still keeping the conversation flowing.
She concluded her talk by giving an example of how conversational AI can be used by autistic children to express themselves. âGood design can break all barriers,â Purna said.
You can watch her full talk above, to hear more about the four âCâs and her design advice.
Che-Wei Wang, Designer at CW&T
Che-Wei discussed the future of the design process, and made some heavy predictions about its future implications:
Computers will take over parts of the design process that we thought were sacred, only reserved for professional human designers.
He began by explaining the emerging technology that will change the design game. The first is performance-based generative design, which is a program that generates new designs using evolutionary algorithms. Che-Wei explained it for the audience:
It works like evolution in nature. It generates thousands of prototypes and picks the best performing design, and then builds off of that generation until it reaches a final high-performing design for you to use. Iâm not getting paid to say this, but I can honestly say that itâs changed the way I think about design.
Itâs especially useful for engineering purposes, but the problem is that it falls short in terms of aesthetics. Thatâs where the next emerging tech comes into play:
Things get really interesting when we combine performance-based generative design with neural networks. Artificial intelligence neurons can be trained to make aesthetic value judgements for you, based on what you like. It can even generate designs based on concepts like âretroâ or âmodern.â And it does this really fast, a million times, until it spits out what you want.
When you couple those two technologies with natural language processing, Che-Wei said it will be game changing. âSoon weâll have meaningful conversations with machines about design,â he said. âMachines can be told what you want out of a design, and even read design briefs for you.â
Che-Wei also went on to discuss the implications of these technologies. He mentioned how it can be weaponized by companies like Amazon, to sway politics and other larger societal concerns. He concluded by saying that in order to prevent this, we need to understand the mechanics behind artificial intelligence:
We need to un-blackbox generative design. The best way to do this is if we all learned the basics of machine learning and AI concepts. This applies for everyone, not just designers. But for the designers especially, you could wait for the robots to steal your jobs, or you can become a robot tamer. Learn how to use generative design software â join the conversation, so you can steer it.
You can watch Che-Weiâs inspiring talk above.
But wait⌠thereâs more!
Our Design Thinkers track at TNW Conference featured many more speakers. You can watch all of their talks right here.
If youâd rather not, thatâs fine too. Weâve compiled a TL;DW (too lazy, didnât watch) for ya:
- Ariel Ekblaw (MIT) explained the design process of innovating for Space, and how itâs becoming accessible to everyone. We also wrote an in-depth article about the fascinating work she does in the MIT Media Lab
- David Mattin (Trendwatching) discussed how AI can provide for our core human needs, and explained the role that design thinking plays in that process
- Lex Hoefsloot (Lightyear) talked about designing transportation for the future, with the goal of sustainability in mind
- Elisa Jagerson (FutureBrand Speck) explained how to create intuitive designs for healthcare
- Mitu Khandaker discussed the importance of involving game designers in building conversational AI
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