- Hi, I'm Jake.
The last time I addressed this audience
was actually for the Interaction 11 redux
back in 2011, so it's been a while.
Tonight I wanna give you
just some highlights.
It's a fantastic conference, I don't know,
who's been to it?
Hands up, who's been to
an Interaction conference?
Not very many people, I know, it's
usually held a long way away.
Hi, Vera, hi.
It's held a long way away and it
costs a lot of money to go to it.
But the standard of
talks are extremely high
and I'm probably not gonna do it
very much justice, however, there's always
some really, really great talks around
process and what people are doing
and case studies and that sort of thing,
but what I'm gonna touch on tonight
are some of the more, sort of...
what's next in design, you know,
what are we doing next.
And if you're interested in that
other sort of stuff, then you can
hunt down the videos.
So basically, I'd like to start with this.
Machines are gonna take over the world,
and life as we know it will die
a horrible death and there's nothing
you or I can do about it.
(laughing)
- [Voiceover] That was my takeaway.
That's my takeaway from this, no.
Anyway...
So basically, a smart phone.
Everyone's got smart phones, right?
You can have up to about
14 different sensors
in a smart phone, and all these sensors
are collecting data about you.
They're perhaps feeding data into apps.
The apps are using networks and holding
it all in the cloud, and
these networks have got
different algorithms that try and process
this data and things happen off the
back of these algorithms
and these networks
speak to systems, and systems can use
APIs to talk to each other, and so
it's not actually that hard to imagine
or to understand the fact that when
we design things on a single system
but make the data that we're designing
accessible to other apps,
it's really easy to see that we no
longer have control of that
and unpredictability
will become quite rife.
So robots.
Kate Darling tries to allay the fear that
robots are actually
gonna take over the world
and destroy us all by showing this
video of the world robot
soccer championships.
And they're actually really bad at soccer.
It was so funny watching this, and
they kept falling over and humans
had to kind of run in and pick them up
and help them back up again and
stuff like that, it's pretty funny.
So she doesn't think that they're
gonna be able to destroy us all
anytime soon, and so she's quite
comfortable with that, however,
robots are actually becoming more
and more involved in the workplace.
So she actually believes that we're gonna
actually see a really,
really long period of time
probably where robots and humans are
actually gonna have to
get along with each other
in the workplace, which is
a kind of a novel thought.
Because robots, they're designed to do
one thing, and as soon as something
else comes into play that they're
not used to or something goes wrong,
they're really bad at dealing with that.
And then she went to go on to say
that robots are really
just at the beginning
of what they're probably capable of doing
in the near future, and as humans
we're actually very physical and emotional
creatures and we tend to put these
human qualities onto our robots,
and so they're beginning to be
designed with this in mind, so if
you look at the Furby for example,
the Furby, kids love 'em,
initially they can only speak Furby
language, and then as you speak
to it more and more, it actually
starts to learn words and it starts
to actually talk back to you, and
it's really cool, you get an iPad
app with it and you can feed it
through the iPad app by putting
the iPad into its mouth and
squishing stuff into it.
The dinosaur next to it is another
cool example of how robots can
actually interact with
human-like qualities,
you know, this robot, if you hold
it by its tail and sort of shake it
upside down it starts to cry, and
they've done experiments where
people actually feel
really bad for the robot,
even though the robot doesn't actually
have any feelings, and so the Boston
Dynamics example on the top right
is a really good example of them
not putting eyes on it, not making it
seem like a real dog, because they
don't want it to have humane qualities.
They want it to seem inhumane,
because it's a military robot.
And the bottom row there is a great
example, three great examples of where
robots are actually being used in health
care and education for really,
really awesome outcomes.
But there is a dark side to robots,
and that is that we need to--
if robots get so good at looking after,
say, aged people, there's a real
danger that we're gonna just neglect
old people and just let
the robots deal with them.
We need this human interaction,
and we can't just replace it with robots.
Another dark side is privacy and security.
So these apps, as I said before,
they've got access to all sorts of
personal data, and that can potentially
be exploited, and the
emotional manipulation.
So if we form these emotional bonds
with robots, there's a real chance that
they're actually gonna be able
to ask us questions, and we somehow,
for some reason, have this emotional bond
so we kind of trust a little bit more
than a form on a website who wants
to know our eye colour.
And so there's a real ethical risk
around that as well.
And then, so Chris Noessel then
gave a talk about artificial intelligence
and he gave a great description
of the various levels of IA.
So we have this concept of narrow IA,
which is sort of what we have today.
So things can, in their very...
in their depth of field they can
actually learn and develop, and
then there's general AI, which
is basically what is known as like
the same intelligence level as humans,
and then we've got super intelligence.
So the theory of singularity kind of fits
in around there, who's
heard of singularity?
Cool, probably about half the audience.
That's basically where intelligence
surpasses us as humans and it will
become very predictable, sorry,
unpredictable or unfathomable to human
intelligence to work out
what the hell's going on.
But Chris gave us a good understanding
of what we're at with narrow.
So we've got this idea
of assistive intelligence
and agentive techs, tech, sorry.
So assistive is where you've got
some artificial intelligence that helps
you with various things, so it assists
you, right, so things like your jobs,
making connexions, helps your body
do things, it gives you extra skills
or, it helps you with art.
But agentive technology on the other hand
is potentially what we don't wanna do
or what we're not good at or
what we have to do but can't do alone.
So these are things that, instead of being
users of this technology, we're actually
becoming managers of it.
So we're saying to something, hey,
go away and do that thing and don't
necessarily bother me, I don't
wanna be involved in that anymore,
just do it for me.
Three really great
examples he gave of this
was the Rumba, which just basically
does your vacuuming for you.
You don't have to get involved with it.
When it starts to run out of battery,
it knows where the charging station is
and it goes and charges itself up,
and you can just basically programme it
to go and do the vacuuming once a week
or twice a week or whatever.
Another example is the Narrative,
which is a little camera that you
put on yourself and it takes a photo
every 30 seconds, and then it basically
has the technology to understand
the scenes in your day to day life,
and at the end of the day, it gives
you a playback of some of the scenes
in your life and the
best stills from that.
And you can interact with it as well,
you can help curate it, but it
does all the curating for
you if you want it to.
You can just let it go.
And the other one is obviously
the Google car, you just tell it
to get you from A to B and it does.
I'd like to also give some really cool
examples of the internet
of things as well, so
these guys Peter and Harun, thank you,
exactly what they were talking about.
So basically, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino,
who developed the Good Night Lamp
where you switch a lamp on in one place
and the other lamp could be anywhere
else in the room, I mean the world,
as long as it's connected to the internet,
and that lamp also goes on as well.
It was originally designed to give
loved ones a sense of presence
when they couldn't be with each other,
but people are actually starting
to use it now for all sorts of different
signalling as well, and I wish that
when I was working for the guys
that I was working for previously
in London that I had one of these
and I could tell them when I was
botherable or not.
A few other examples, Propeller,
so there's basically a sensor that
you can put on your puffer to gain
insights into what's actually triggering
asthma attacks and reduce the hassle
of managing your condition and stay
connected to your family,
so there's a whole app behind it
and that sort of stuff.
Personal safety device with a built-in
microphone and tracking device.
If you feel like you're in danger,
you just tap this thing three times
and it activates a microphone.
An operator can hear
everything that's going on,
you can obviously tell it, oh sorry,
false alarm if you need to, but basically
the operator can hear everything, and
they can dispatch help if you need it.
In the UK they've got this flood network,
so basically if you live within, I think
it's 40 metres of a creek or river
and you're actually concerned about flood
levels and rising waters and stuff,
and maybe it's because you spend
a lot of time away from your property
or something like that, you can actually
purchase one of these devices and
instal it nearby your house and
then register on the network,
and because it's a network, people
that monitor these sorts of things
have access to all the data and
they can give much better warnings
of rising flood levels.
Another really cool one, and this
is probably my favourite one, is
one that saves water.
You attach it between your showerhead
and the water pipe, and basically--
you know how when you get in the shower
and turn the water on, it usually takes
a good minute or two for the water
to heat up enough to get in it?
This actually doesn't let any water out
until it's actually heated
up to that temperature,
so you switch it on, it heats up,
and then you jump in the shower and you
push a button and the water comes
out, but not only that, if you're
standing really close to it, it comes
out at 100% pressure.
If you stand back a little bit,
it goes to 80% pressure, maybe
lathering or something.
If you stand even further away,
it goes to like 10% pressure, and
it gives you an app and you can track
all your water usage and all that
sort of stuff, it's really cool.
Another example is this specially
designed tractor, and people in
mainly Africa I think is where they
use maybe SMS can actually order
a tractor for their farm for a bespoke
period of time, and people that
own these tractors can actually
service that and they can track
it all and everything,
that's another cool idea.
And the air quality egg, which basically
is a sensor system and a community
designed to allow anyone to publish
the nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide
concentrations around their home.
And that's publishable on the internet,
so you can get information on that.
Basically what she, the whole premise
of her talk was trying to expose
all these really cool internet devices
and internet of things, but basically
she said that these technologies,
technologists are actually getting
access to all these really cool toys,
and it doesn't seem to her that,
she's running the meetup group in London,
that there's many designers actually
involved in it yet, so she's just saying,
look, tech is potentially taking a big
piece of the design pie here because
there's not as many designers in here,
and we as designers have an amazing
amount of experience making sure
that technology actually meets a need,
so let's get involved with that,
interaction designers and industrial
designers need to work
more closely together,
which is to your point as well.
Another cool example is the grove
ecosystem, which is basically an ecosystem
that harnesses the natural relationship
between fish, microbes and plants
to bring fresh food and life and food
into your home, and again
it gives you an app.
If the pH is low on your
fish tank, it tells you.
Woah. Ok.
Greg Petroff ran a pretty cool panel
as well about the next five
years in European design.
It didn't actually go too deep that was
really that European, but some really
cool points were made in it.
I've broken them down into design
transformation and
societal transformation,
basically the design industry itself
is going through transformation.
Obviously the maturity
model is increasing,
so we're actually seeing that businesses
are understanding the value of design.
The designers are actually affecting
business models, we're actually leaning
more towards an internal design culture,
but no one agreed that agencies
were gonna go out of business,
so don't worry about that.
We're also seeing a
focus on sustainability.
At the moment the buzzword is disruption,
but they think within the next five
years it will shift
more to sustainability.
And again, we need to spend more time
with industries as designers, we've got
these skills, let's use them.
And societal transformation, so people
becoming more comfortable giving
their data to certain apps, certain
networks and things,
but there's this whole
privacy and transparency and trust issue
that we need to get over,
so companies should be more transparent
about the data that they hold
and gain trust by using it ethically,
and it's not until we give value back
for the data that we hold that people
are gonna trust us for holding their data.
I would be doing an injustice if I didn't
mention Cameron Sinclair's closing
keynote, which was absolutely amazing.
Basically, Cameron gives...
he helps build shelter and communities for
people who have been
displaced from their homes
due to environmental
disasters or conflict.
It received a standing ovation.
I recommend you go and watch the
talk, because it's absolutely amazing.
He says that we should
forget virtual reality,
let's work on actual reality.
He says, design like you give a damn,
and I think what he means by this
is we as designers have core skills
around solving complex problems.
Let's not waste it, humanity's at
the centre of everything that we do.
Let's not lose sight of
our responsibilities.
We have the power to change this planet,
let's make sure it's for the better.
And on that note, I'd like to flip
to a video, if we have
time, three minutes,
about the project that took top honours,
basically received best in show
at this year's Interaction Awards
which have their ceremony
at the closing party.
- ustwo are a digital product studio.
We've been working closely with
the RLSB's youth forum, investigating
how we might empower
vision-impaired people
to travel independently around their city.
- Our youth forum, founded in 2013,
is made up of vision
impaired people age 16 to 25.
Following the release of
their youth manifesto,
the youth forum teamed up with ustwo
to explore potential solutions to the
transport challenges they were facing.
- As part of the design process, what
we really needed to do was to experience
the feeling of travelling across the city
as vision-impaired person.
We used a combination of
simulation and observation.
The observations allowed us to see
the issues at first hand, but through
the simulations, we got a glimpse into
what it might feel like.
For the youth forum, being involved
in the design of the solution to
the challenges they were facing
has been extremely important,
being able to use the perhaps negative
experiences they've had to create
something positive to change the lives
of vision-impaired people.
- It was interesting to be able to
walk without help, so it made me
feel more confident,
made me feel independent.
Yeah, it's a good experience.
- [Umesh] The beacon broadcasts an ID,
which is received by a smart phone.
(chiming)
The smart phone decodes the beacon ID
and navigation instructions are
spoken to the user, a bit like this.
- [Voiceover] You are halfway
down to the ticket hall.
(chiming)
(chiming)
The down escalator is straight ahead.
- [Umesh] Wayfindr is
the open standardised
guideline for audio wayfinding.
Wayfindr dissolves into
digital navigation services
to create experiences that are consistent,
seamless and reliable, in turn empowering
vision-impaired people to move
independently through their environment,
completing day-to-day tasks or
exploring new places around the world.
- [Katherine] Sign up now at wayfindr.net.
- So you can see how using our skills
we can create a massive amount of impact
for people and humanity in general.
I did have one more slide,
which basically just had the links to
the Interaction Design Award videos,
which that was one of, and
the videos from the conference, so all
the conference talks are on the
Interaction Design Association
website anyway and Vimeo.
And as they say in Helsinki, kiitos,
which means thank you.
(applause)
