so one of the things I'm most passionate
about is helping people learn how to
think like a designer and this came
about because today you don't need the
word UX in your job title in order to
contribute to the experience because
today the experience is about all the
touch points that someone has right it's
about what they experience on the screen
maybe in store the packaging what they
see on Facebook and Twitter it's
everything and so I hope that you will
get a little bit of a glimpse into the
world as user experience designer but
also challenge yourself in how you think
is a designer so first of all I need
everyone to do me a favor and you have
to close your eyes okay now open your
eyes and imagine that you have just won
the lottery 528 million like these lucky
people in Tennessee now a question that
comes up if this happens is will you
stay at your job so quick survey stand
up if you would stay at your job
it looks like about 50% or so and
Careerbuilder did a survey in 2014 about
this very topic and they found that 49%
would leave their job and 51% would keep
their job and this was across a variety
of industries blue collar white collar
etc so it's pretty even and the question
comes up though
why would 51% of people stay at their
job so the survey went on to ask this
very thing and I want you to kind of
raise your hand as I read through some
of these reasons so what would you state
your job if you were scared that you'd
be bored if you didn't work okay how
about that your work really gives you
accomplishment and something to be proud
of okay you want the financial security
and you don't just want to rely on the
lottery in case you blow it okay and
then how many of you would miss your
co-workers again pretend they're not
here okay looks like you all get along
with your co-workers so this gets to the
idea of fulfillment and that we as
humans we crave fulfillment we want to
belong we want to contribute we want to
have a sense of achievement but the
thing is what this survey found is quite
different from what we sometimes
experience on a normal week right so on
a normal Sunday if you weren't coming to
an event like this you might have a case
of what I learned is called thus Mondays
and this is apparently a real thing it's
out on Pinterest and Instagram and it's
that feeling on a Sunday when the
anxiety of the week creeps in and you
just you kind of get away from the
relaxing of Sunday and start to stress
out and so this leads up to the topic of
the paradox of work and I learned about
this in a book called the glass cage and
it examines this dichotomy and in the
book it talked about a survey that
happened at the University of Chicago in
the 80s where they wanted to study the
effect of people's activities on their
experience and so they found 400 people
gave them all paid
because this was the 80s and over the
course of a week
the pager went off seven times every day
and so seven times a day the people
filled out what they were doing and how
they were feeling and the results were
quite interesting the results said that
people were happier and felt more
fulfilled by what they were doing at
work than during their leisure hours and
the thing is it's not just the job that
makes us happy it's that the job creates
an environment for flow now most of us
are designers here so you can relate to
this right you sit down to design
something and maybe it's a struggle at
first but then next thing you know an
hour to have gone by you have no idea
what songs have just played on your
Spotify playlist and you think I have
made the best design in the world
that's that state of flow and there's a
lot of neuroscience behind flow so I'm
not going to go too crazy on this I was
gonna study neuroscience though but at
the frontier brain there's a part called
the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and
this nasty thing is responsible for
self-monitoring meaning that voice of
doubt that neg or we could just say it's
the reason impostor syndrome happens so
researchers at John Hopkins wanted to
understand the state of people's brains
when they were in flow so they used fMRI
machines to look at people's brains and
what they found is that during that
state of flow that front part of the
brain for self-monitoring it is
deactivated which is crazy but this is
why we get into the state of flow
because you're no longer inhibited by
fear you take more risk you're more
creative because that front part of your
brain is not sending you all those
negative thoughts so I know that was a
lot but let's recap really quick so
we're happiest in our flow State flow
happens more at work and less in leisure
because we're actually not that good at
creating structure
and giving ourselves challenges in the
same way that we are challenged at work
so now that you understand this
love-hate relationship that we have with
our jobs I need to talk to you about
robots and there's this website called
will robots take my job calm now you
don't have to go there because I already
have the answer for you and brace
yourselves it's good news there's only
an eight point two percent chance that
your job as graphic designers will be
taken over by robots so you know we can
all breathe a sigh release but there's a
little bit of bad news and that is that
automation is changing the way that we
live and work and we already see this a
lot right now with driverless cars with
things in our homes that do things
automatically buttons you compress to
order things drones etc etc and our
lives are becoming more computed and
less human for better or worse and so
today I want to explore these two ideas
that are impacting how we live and work
and that's the idea of anticipatory
design which is about predicting
people's needs and giving them great
information and great opportunities to
make choices versus automated design
where we do things or we instruct our
systems to do things on their behalf so
anticipatory design I always like to say
if me as a UX designer if I'm not
anticipating people's needs then I'm
what the heck am i doing right design is
really all about meeting people's needs
giving them what they want before they
even know they need it and so I think
even though anticipatory design is kind
of hot right now it's already happening
a lot around us so we see this in flight
ups for example where if I'm flying
either the day before or maybe the day
of delta will give me information or
actions that are anticipating my needs
it's related to check-in or if the gate
changed or if the time changed or
something like that and when I was
eating lunch I saw that Delta today
an update to their app which now checks
me and automatically Stan I have to
change all this but they are
anticipating my needs the next example
is with search so I'm Canadian but I'm
also American so I can vote and last
year this time I wanted to make sure I
could vote so I went to Google and typed
in how do I
and before I typed in the are of
register it's giving me the options so I
clicked how do I register to vote and on
the search results page kind of before
the you know 2.7 million results there
was this almost cliffnotes voting module
let's call it where it answered those
key questions of am i registered how do
I register where do I vote all these
things was anticipating my needs really
helpful saves me a ton of time trying to
mess around all the government sites
which sometimes aren't the best no
offense if you work on those but fast
company had a great article all about
anticipate Ori design and in the article
it said in the future design around us
will sweat the small stuff and it went
on to say that our lives are not made
easier by all this anticipation because
it still forces us to make a decision
and I can I can see the point of that
because last week I had to buy laundry
detergent I live in New York I could
have easily done this but I was busy and
so I thought I'd do it on Amazon and
gather the next day and I put that in
and I got 397 options for these little
laundry pods and instantly I was
overwhelmed I am using those filters at
the left seeing what comes in prime not
prime looking at the reviews seeing what
I ordered before all these things and I
to be honest I probably spent five to
eight minutes messing around on these
results and then I didn't even buy them
because I was so overwhelmed that's what
I'm gonna do when I get back tomorrow
but another example we have is with
Netflix so any time that I have a little
bit of downtime I think okay maybe I'll
stand and watch a movie and my perfect
vision of Netflix if you work at next
flicks let's connect but my perfect
vision is that
I go and they almost had me on a silver
platter the perfect movie for me and
that does not happen because I go to
Netflix and I get 18 different movies
right off the back and similar to the
397 laundry pods I'm totally overwhelmed
and what happens for me is that I watch
a trailer I get out of it i favored it
and then I would say 7 out of 10 times
I don't watch anything because I get
frustrated or i watch the two movies
that I probably watch all the time so
this is evidence that we suffer from
decision fatigue how many people would
say they suffer from decision fatigue
probably not even on a daily basis on
like an hourly basis and there is a
number out there 35,000 decisions per
day that we face now I really tried hard
to find the source of that and I can't
track it down but it's widely cited so
let's go with it
but this decision fatigue is fueled
because we are tethered to technology
right now our phones are giving us so
much information and so many decisions
that we could make on probably a
minute-by-minute basis and I read a I
was a shocking article on hacker news
that took studies for different studies
and kind of aggregated them and they
concluded that on average every day
we're spending four hours on our phones
and an hour and 56 minutes of that is on
social just those social apps just those
five that's not even taking into account
Pinterest and things like that the
shocking thing is over the course of
your lifetime
this becomes five years and four months
of time on your phones and think of how
much anxiety and how much decision
fatigue that must cause us and what are
the side effects of that so what can
save us from this decision fatigue in
the article it goes on to say decisions
are made and
executed on behalf of the user and that
the goal should not just be to help the
user make a decision but to create this
world where the user never needs to make
a decision because it happens
automatically and without their input
and so this is a little controversial
for me but I know this is happening
right we see it with things like nest
how many people have a nest so the nest
it does things automatically it's
adjusting the temperature in your home
based on your behavior as it learns
about you we also see this in a lot of
finance apps there's a whole suite of
finance apps right now
aimed at helping us save money because
we're not very good at saving money but
this app will do it automatically for us
so the way it works is it you connect it
to your checking account and then every
day it saves the little money based on
how much it thinks you can afford so
maybe today it's five dollars maybe
tomorrow it's 50 next week it's 150 I
don't know but it's doing it
automatically for you so these are great
but my concern is that will we take all
this anticipation anticipatory design
and automated design too far and what
would that look like so go into this
imaginary automated world with me and in
this world maybe this is my calendar and
some magical system is looking at it and
it notices that I need to do a workshop
in London it also notices that there's
no flights booked yet so being the
helpful system that it is it decides to
go ahead and book a flight for me and
has me leave on Saturday come back on
Thursday has all my meals and seat
preferences and things and in theory
this would be good because knowing me I
probably would have taken two hours but
the flakes I'd have been so overwhelmed
with all the options but it's not that
great because I had a lot of other plans
in mind that the system didn't know
about maybe they weren't on my calendar
so I didn't want to leave on Saturday at
7 o'clock I wanted to leave on the last
flight because actually
it was my birthday and I was training
for the marathon so I had to run 22
miles I needed the last flight to
recover and do a little partying and
then on the return I didn't want to come
back right after the workshop I wanted
to spend the weekend in London so I
needed to leave on Saturday not Thursday
so in theory this works but quickly all
these problems arise and so my question
is can technology really really
choreograph around all the little
details of our lives oftentimes all the
details that are in our minds right and
not explicitly on our calendars are
explicitly using information that we've
given the system so I want to pause here
and say don't get me wrong because I
love the automation that I have set up
in my life I think I couldn't run my
business and have my life be the way it
is because if I didn't have all the
automation I'd be doing a lot more
tedious work but I do think that we
cannot and probably should not automate
everything and so I want to leave us
with three cautions to think about and
also three design principles that we can
consider as we inevitably move into
designing more around experiences that
have an anticipatory design and
automated decisions so the three
cautions first of all accuracy what
happens when anticipation is inaccurate
or when automation fails and we can look
to aviation for a great example so we
all know planes are flying themselves
but what I didn't know until I read this
book the glass cage is that planes on
average are flown by the pilot for only
three to four minutes out of each flight
so you can think about that as you go
home
but um I I had no clue and what's
interesting is that the last pilots are
flying the less they're using their
flying skills and this leads to
something called D
Skilling we're just like muscles when
you're not using your muscles they're
not as useful when the pilots are not
flying the planes as much they're
they're losing those piloting skills and
the FAA actually realized that in 10
years from 2010 sorry from 2000 to 2010
two-thirds of crashes could be
attributed to pilot error and one
example of this is from 2009 Air France
flight 447 it was going from Rio to
Paris it was bad weather they knew that
going in and they got up into the air
encountered the weather and what
happened was some of the instrumentation
got really really iced over which
resulted in the autopilot disconnecting
so the pilots had to step in and the
main pilot he was like on a break and
some other part of the plane so this
other combination of pilots were there
now my basic physics knowledge for after
reading this article the pilot the plane
was going long hit the weather autopilot
disengages and so then the pilot took
the throttles and pulled them back and
what that did would it made the plane go
up and then like a rollercoaster it's
stalled out and it went down at 10,000
feet per minute and we know what
happened everyone perished and in the
report that the French equivalent of the
FAA did they said that it could be
attributed to a total loss of cognitive
control of the situation and loss of
physical control of the airplane in in
other words these skilling so one thing
to think about is if automation fails
can the user come in and course-correct
and this is an extreme example but it's
important to consider what are the
consequences the second caution is
around innovation and if we automate too
much where will new ideas come from
because we as people we're always
looking for ways to improve to do things
faster for cheaper more efficiently and
we see this in the automotive industry
where Toyota spent a lot of time
of money investing in robots for their
factories but they recently put people
back into the factories and after doing
that they ended up decreasing production
line in some areas by 96% and that must
have led to amazing changes in finances
and efficiencies and all kinds of things
and so the question really is for us
machines can do things over and over and
over which is great but they're not
looking out for those improvements of
innovation and we can do things over and
better so if we're going to automate a
lot of things we need to think about
where can we put opportunities in for us
to check in with the system to give
feedback to be that second set of eyes
maybe the only set of eyes
finally the human experience going back
to the beginning here what becomes of
the human experience if we automate too
much because we know that we find
satisfaction in that struggle when we
get into that state of flow it gives us
happiness it gives us joy and so where
will that source of fulfillment come
from if a lot of our work and our lives
is automated and kind of a side note
what will we do with all the free time
that we all of a sudden have on our
hands when we put it to good use or
we'll be just be spending eight hours a
day on our phones so we'll anticipate or
design and automation rob us of this
fulfillment and the three design
principles I want to leave you with
really quickly
our first transparency because if we
automate everything in order to create a
great experience I think we need to be
transparent and let people know what is
being done and make it explicitly clear
because they need to be able to see that
but also they need to being able to
easily take back control or in some
cases reverse decisions that we're not
accurate and so the financial app for
example they do a really good job of
this because I can easily go back in and
see every little thing that it's done
for me and I can go in and I can even
text message with it and tell it to
pause or
change things and it has that
transparency the next design principle
is around curation so if you recall back
to Amazon and Netflix they were trying
to anticipate my needs and curate my
experience the problem is that people
are quite skeptical of algorithms and
I've done a lot of research kind of one
on one user interviews and one of the
things that we find especially in a
commerce site is that people don't trust
the algorithms when they see that module
that says you might be interested in or
people also bought they know it's an
algorithm and they feel like they're
just being sold to so curation has to
become more human and that could be as
simple as just being more thoughtful
with the copy around these modules but
we need to aim for quality aim for more
human and don't go for quantity because
of decision fatigue and finally the idea
of trust and that if systems are going
to make decisions for us we have to
trust them because in order for them to
make good decisions they have to know a
lot about us and they can infer things
about us but we also need to give those
systems information about us and the
only way that we're going to give it
information is if we trust it so
whenever I'm designing anything I kind
of approach it with this idea of
give-and-take for everything that I ask
the user I tell them why I'm asking for
it or I show them maybe in the next step
or two why I asked for it and how I'm
putting it to use to make their
experience better so as you think about
that balance between anticipating
people's needs and automating and making
their decisions for them it's important
to consider these cautions and also
these design principles and one question
that I think we should all ask ourselves
is are we doing this based on necessity
or novelty if we have the opportunity to
make decisions for people are we doing
it kind of because of technology for the
sake of technology or is it really the
right decision for the experience for
the person and I want to leave you with
this there is an article in The New York
Times called solving all the wrong
problems
and it started off with a huge list of
startups that the author had heard about
out in San Francisco and just a couple
of them were a smart button to alert you
if your zipper is down an app to analyze
the quality of your french-kissing
and a sensor to let you know when you
should change your child's diaper among
others right and the question and the
the premise of the article was for the
most fundamental definition of design is
to solve problems why are so many people
devoting them selves to solving problems
that really don't exist so I want to
leave you with this challenge that we
have a responsibility to solve problems
but also not to create bigger problems
so in the decisions that you make are
you maybe solving a short-term problem
for the user but creating a longer-term
problem down the road
are you robbing them of innovation are
you robbing them at experience so thank
you and if you are curious about this
I'm gonna have the slides and links to
the survey or studies and books and all
that at this link so thanks all right
I'm also I'm from the Bay Area so I'm
also interested in this concept of
solving the wrong problem because I see
that in the startup culture all the time
yes how so you get hired by companies
yep and I'm sure that a couple of them
are solving the wrong problem or you get
many and so how do you assess that how
do you say no yeah when it's really
something that isn't a value to you talk
us through one of these branching
diagrams of how you decide so two
examples really come to mind like you
said I have clients that approach me all
the time and my first question to them
is really how do you know people want
this and I try and understand have they
done any research what have they done to
validate this idea and oftentimes the
answer is well my friend thinks it's a
good idea or my sister says she would
use it I even had one guy building
something related to children but he
didn't have any children
and he thought he was the user so it's
always a challenge but sometimes if
they've not validated their idea and
they accept my proposal to do research I
will go and do research and sometimes
that research says no you shouldn't
build this right and that's when you
have to really be sensitive to the
founder or the client and figure out how
to deliver them this bad news and one
example would be this one company wanted
to build a huge content site and the
whole time we were doing research I was
thinking no no this is not good idea and
the research ended up revealing that and
so instead of just going back to them
and saying no my team and I we came up
with like a MVP version of what they
could do mm-hmm yep so they could build
something and maybe that little
miniature product would be enough right
do you ever get caught up in their
excitement for their thing even though
it might be yeah I would say at this
point in my career no because I see so
much of that and to that article that I
spoke about and just so many of ideas
that I hear about because I'm in the
bubble I guess yeah I guess I'm a little
jaded and I just think like does this
really need to exist and I am at the
point where I'm not afraid to tell
people if I don't think it is and and
challenge them and encourage them to do
that research right I think I'm too
jaded at this point even useful things
I'm like I don't think I'm really
interested in this idea of the
automation paradox and this descaling I
mean we did a story on a radio show and
I'm invisible about the children of
magenta which is like the pilots who use
the instrument panel to fly okay rather
than what they see for
and they've eventually they kind of lost
a lot of their skills yeah because they
only follows this automation I mean
obviously the airplane example is like
the worst case scenario for this sort of
thing but what are what are the ways
that we would encounter this in everyday
life there's descaling in all kinds of
ways like I don't know how to do what
most people in this room know how to do
yep so how do you you know what is
useful Dee skilling so that there's
specialization and what is sort of like
the ones that are more dangerous to use
so I think a big example related to our
field right now is this obsession with
software in design and plugins and
shortcuts and prototyping tools and all
these things and it puts the focus on
deliverables and less about the strategy
so when I'm working on something I often
say to especially with students I say
we're not coding anything we're not
designing anything for the first X
number of weeks because we want to be an
exploration mode in strategy mode and we
don't want to jump into the building
phase because once you jump into the
build or design phase you're
automatically sucked into the weeds of
what color what font is the button round
is it square all these details right and
so I think that these these tools that
maybe let us get to the deliverable
faster are not the best because it's
robbing us of that strategy and thinking
and brainstorming time right well I've
never really thought about that that way
so that the slow way do it it just gives
you some time to think about why am i
drawing this button and all that way
because so so many people come to me
with they come with a hundred pages of
wireframes or something and I just think
they should have not done there should
be a hundred pages of research if they
had only kind of come to me three months
ago we could have put some strategy
around this instead of just crank out
every single screen of the experience
that's very interesting all right sir do
David thank you so much thanks
okay okay
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