ANTICIPATORY SERVICES & AMBIENT PERSONALISATIONOli Shaw | FJORD | Service Design Lead@olishaw

© FJORD 2013 Confidential Page 2

I’M A SERVICE DESIGN LEAD @ FJORD

I'm a service designer at Fjord, we do assorts of things...

© FJORD 2013 Confidential Page 3

INNOVATION

Design for data England riots: what happened to the rioters? Retail price of roasted co!ee, 2013

Design of new consumer services

Re-imagination of the phone bill

Re-imagination of healthcare

FOR THIS TALK, THINK BEYOND:

THE UI WHICH DEVICES

LIVING SERVICES

@olishaw

My focus in recent years has been around 'Living services'...in particular I’ve been exploring and experimenting with a few

key questions

What is our relationship to the invisible systems which power these services?

@olishaw

How are these services learning about us, and personalising themselves to our needs?

@olishaw

How are they anticipating our needs, before we have them?

@olishaw

DESIGN CHALLENGES TODAY

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10247381@N02/10414030285/

Designers already face a number of challenges to overcome...

Designing products and services today has an exponential amount of challenges to overcome from kick-off to delivery,

there is a mountain of technological devices where the experience can be had, there is an ever increasing amount of

content to be navigated and consumed.

RESPONSIVE, ADAPTIVE, AGNOSTIC, AND SOON ANTICIPATORY IN SOME CASES HAVING AMBIENT ATTRIBUTES.

Being a designer today demands that your work is appropriately considerate of: Responsive, adaptive, agnostic, and soon

anticipatory in some cases ambient attributes.

“The future is already here - it's just not

evenly distributed” William Gibson

With my work, and in general, I spend a lot of time thinking and exploring the future. To expand on the quote “The future is

already here – it's just not evenly distributed” (William Gibson),

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54450095@N05/9690003914/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35434449@N08/6101048472/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35434449@N08/5837104559/

“The future is already here - it's just not

evenly distributed”

While we have been so distracted by wearables, glassholes and self-driven cars, there has been a much more profound

future which has inserted itself into our lives.

ANTICIPATORY SERVICES & AMBIENT PERSONALISATION

@olishaw

So to todays focus: Anticipatory services & Ambient personalisation.

THE OBVIOUS PERSPECTIVE: BIG DATA & ANALYTICS

There is an obvious perspective on anticipatory services, which is from the view of technology, which inevitable goes in to

the topics of data analytics, big data and such.

I can happily talk to you about algorithms and sensors, in fact come an chat to me latter if you are interested in this area...

LENSES OF ‘HUMAN’ & ‘DESIGN’

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51324001@N05/4817484054/

but there is another perspective, that of the design view, from the human point of view...

Designing our relationshipwith modern services.

@olishaw

I see this as ‘designing our relationship with modern services’

“Just do it for me”

“It just works”

“I’m lazy”

“Ain’t got time for that”What I hear a lot of common views with regards to products and technology is:

"it just works", "Just do it for me", "I'm Lazy"

and generally everyone is so busy with life they "ain't got time for that"

And the answer to these questions?

‘SMART’

Lets make it ‘smart’ - smart tvs, smart phones, smart websites, smart apps...

SMART FRIDGE...

Lets start with the smart fridge, the thing we so often love to hate on. A smart fridge will do any number of

features, however the question I always find my self asking is where should the 'smart' live in this process?

Zooming out, what is the motivation, need or behavior here?

I need to eat, I need to have food in my house to feed myself... if this is the challenge/issue why is a fridge

the answer?

?

1. NEED FOOD 2. CHOOSE FOOD 3. ORDER FOOD

5. BUY FOOD6. STORE FOOD7. CHOOSE FOOD

8. PREPARE FOOD 9. EAT FOOD 10. DISPOSE WASTE FOOD

examining the process:

I dispose of waste food

I eat food

I prepare food

I choose what to eat

I store food

I purchase food

I order food

I choose food

I desire food?

why not

Where should the ‘smart’ live?

why can the smart not live in another area, other then a smart fridge?

?

QS SERVICE DIET SERVICE SMART GROCERY STORE

SMART BANKSMART KITCHENRECIPE FINDER APP

SMART COOKER SMART FORK SMART BIN

should it live in:

The place I choose food? Do I want to cook or take-out?

Is it from my online grocery store?

is it in the fridge, the cooker, my iPad where I have a cook book?

is it the whole kitchen?

is it my quantified self tracker as I eat the food, suggesting what and when I should eat next?

or is it the smart bin, which know what I have thrown out, and orders more

WHY SHOULD SMART LIVE IN THE FRIDGE?

Why should the smart live in the fridge?

Do I want X talking to X?

What happens when they disagree?

How should the smart work together?

Who is the leader? 

INVISIBLE SYSTEMS POWERING THE SMART

When you get into it, it becomes more about the design of the relationship we have with these living services, these smart systems which are already becoming part of our lives.

But so much of what makes these services is actually invisible to the user...

EXAMPLE OF

TODAYS SERVICES:

WHAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO BUY

Today. Amazon tells us what else we might like to read or buy,

WHO YOU MIGHT KNOW

Facebook & LinkedIn tell us whom we might know

WHAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO WATCH

and Netflix tell us what we might like to watch.

WHAT TEMPERATURE YOU WOULD LIKE

more relevantly nest anticipate what temperature we would like

WHEN TO LEAVE

google now does a few things based on anticipating our needs

EXAMPLE OF

TOMORROWS

LIVING SERVICES:

In tomorrows living services we might encounter scenarios like these examples:

MORTGAGE

If you pay an extra £50 a month you’ll end your mortgage

3 years early

Say I have a mortgage, I login to my mortgage service, it offers me a suggestion; that if I pay an extra £50 a

month overpayment on my mortgage I could pay it off 3 years earlier. And you know, I’ll consider that and I

might just do it, more then that I'd be happy with the service making that suggestion to me.

MORTGAGE

If you pay an extra £50 a month you’ll end your mortgage

3 years early

Looking at your current account, you could spend £50

a month less on Dominos Pizza and put it towards

your mortgage

Take the same scenario an push it a bit further, I have a mortgage, the service suggest I pay an extra £50 a

month, but this time the service goes a bit further, the service has in the background reviewed my current

account and has identified that I’m regularly spending money on dominos pizza, its seen that I’m ordering

once or twice a week. Using this insight the service has suggested that I could have one less take away from

dominos each week, I'd have that £50 to put towards my mortgage. In essence the service is now telling me

that I could be better spending my money on my Mortgage then on a ‘luxury’ of a pizza each week. In

principle this suggestion is coming from a place of good, I probably shouldn’t be eating so much take out

and if I can pay my mortgage off fast I probably should.

DO I WANT THE SERVICE MAKING THAT SUGGESTION TO ME?

But do I want the service making that suggestion to me?

Take it a step further still, say I agree with the service and I let it know that I’ll not spend on pizza and put it towards my mortgage. Now its late one evening; I decide that ‘you know what… to hell with it’, I’ll get a pizza, but then the order is declined, the payment won’t go though the service has decided that I shouldn’t be ordering pizza, which I had agreed with and it is ‘helping me’ by preventing me!!!!.

Now I need an override button, but you know that it isn’t going to be easy to find, all in the name of helping me, help myself.

CAR INSURANCE

Say I’m a young driver and my insurance is astronomically high, how about a service which can offer you

cheaper insurance based on how you as an individual actually drive, a good way of bringing your car

insurance cost down.

[video of Ingenie advert]

The Ingenie ‘black box’ as they call it can monitor how you drive: including speed, acceleration, breaking and

cornering.

So what happens when they map this with GPS tracking, they can know if you where speeding and probably

much more then that. What happens then, do they automatically report you to the police, and the first thing

you know about it is a speeding fine through the post? Or if your and your black box where to be involved in

an accident it will create a new layer of detail to the crime scene model, yet this will only cover the

telematics and not necessarily the whole picture of the accident.

CHANGING JOBS

You know theres an ideal role coming up for you...

How about if LinkedIn could predict when you where unhappy and potentially looking to change jobs, what

if it could make some helpful suggestion on which companies where likely to be interested in someone with

your skills and experience, better then that they have recently had a few people leave in similar roles so its

likely that they might be looking and then the service helps you contact the right person to enquire about a

job.

CHANGING JOBSHere is a chart of who is

most likely to leave:

But turn that round and look at it from an employers perspective, LinkedIn provide a service to companies in

which it will give them a chart showing the employees which have been scored and are most likely to be

looking to leave, sometimes even before the fully realise themselves.

HOW ABOUT SOMETHING MORE

PERSONAL...

How about if Facebook could use it’s analysis of your actions on the site to anticipate when you where likely to breakup with your partner?

“Too much change in too short a period of time”

Alvin Toffler

But…As soon as we have fully realised the necessary infrastructure, these plausible futures will rocket

forwards advancing our lives at such a speed we won't have enough time to; understand or learn the

systems.

Alvin Toffler wrote about this very notion in his book Future Shock, he described it as "too much change in

too short a period of time".

EMOTIONS OF PERSONALISATION

@olishaw

As designers there is a much greater challenge ahead of us. It moves far beyond the creation of the UI of a product or the

experience design of a service. Smart services, ambiently personalise themselves to us.

Designers need to consider the emotional aspects of what it means to have a service personalised to the individual.

UNCANNY VALLEYThere is an uncanny valley of personalisation

@olishaw

UNCANNY VALLEY OF PERSONALISATION

I want you to know

I don't mind you knowing

I don’t want you to know

How do you know that?

surprisingly helpful

uncanny valley of personalisation:I want you to knowI don't mind you knowingI don't want you to know/share thatHow the hell do you know that?delight & surprise

RELEVANT CREEPY

Where is the line between a useful relevant service and one, which has more similarities to something creepy

and like a stalker? 

ADVICE PARENTING

Where is the line between a service that advises and a service that parents you?

Are these services going to be more like Butlers who stand back when not needed, keep’s your secrets and

makes suggestions for you to act on or ignore as you see fit.

Or are these services going to be more like parents who remove decision from our control, who act on our

behalf in our best interest without consulting us, like an authoritative figure in our lives?

UNFAMILIAR HUMAN + MACHINE

TERRITORY

@olishaw

We are taking our users into new uncharted ‘human + machine’ territory.

WE ARE TRANSITIONING

THE RELATIONSHIPS OUR

USERS ARE HAVING WITH

THESE SERVICES, SYSTEMS

& MACHINES.

@olishaw

We need to remember that through our designs we are transitioning the relationships our users are having

with these; services, systems and machines.

SERVICES WHICH CAN:

ANTICIPATE, ADAPT &

AUTOMATICALLY MAKE DECISIONS FOR THEM

@olishaw

In which our users are forced to experience new and complex emotions, as they’re now faced with a service

that can anticipate their needs, adapt to their situation and in some cases automatically make decisions on

their behalf.

CHOICE IS REPLACED BY TRUST

@olishaw

and choice is replaced by trust.

From a brand perspective, the future is looking very interesting...as trust is a key attribute for almost every

brand

BRAND TRUST: WHAT IF...

APPLE DID BANKING?

VOLVO DID HEALTHCARE?

LV DID TAKE-OUT DINNERS?

What if..?

The more the services learn about us, the more personalised they can become, and the more we need to

have trust in them.

Data leaks will become much more of an issue for brands to contend with.

Especially when they contain enough information about us to anticipate very personal things

INVITED PERSONALISATION

VS

UNINVITED PERSONALISATION

@olishaw

invited personalisation vs uninvited personalisation

what happens when you don't know its happening?

Scanning your face and profiling you at the checkout

But what happens when is less obvious? Like with these harmless adverts on bins...

Data including the "movement, type, direction, and speed of unique devices" was recorded from smartphones that had their Wi-Fi on.

It can record Movement, type direction and speed of a unique device

"It provides an unparalleled insight into the past behavior of unique devices -- entry/exit points, dwell times, places of work, places of interest, and affinity to other devices -- and should provide a compelling reach data base for predictive analytics (likely places to eat, drink, personal habits etc.),"

which can reveal places of work, places of interest, affinity to other devices (people) and can lead to predictions about personal habits!

"as some of the technology we will be testing will be on the boundaries of what is regulated and discussed it is our intention to discuss it publicly”

Renew London CEO Kaveh Memari

at the discretion of the companies

TECHNOLOGY IS ADVANCING FASTER

THEN THE LAWS THAT PROTECT US

@olishaw

Technology is advancing faster then the regulations are changing.

MELTING POT OF

SENSORS, ANALYTICS,

MACHINE VISION, BIG

DATA, ALGORITHMS

AND MORE.

@olishaw

To design the next and future waves of services, we need to invest the time to learn how this new technology

works. Living services will be a melting pot of sensors, analytics, machine vision, big data, algorithms and

more.

UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA

@olishaw

There is a clear utopian vision of what personalisation can do for us as individuals, but there are also a very

real dystopian consequences to what this personalisation ability opens the door to.

In this beginning of a design future thesis, I have explored some speculative thoughts, partly because right

now we are not quite over the technology hump of having connected information flowing between systems

and services. But…As soon as we have fully realised the necessary infrastructure, these plausible futures will

rocket forwards advancing our lives at such a speed we won't have enough time to; understand or learn the

systems.

WE ARE AT A CRITICAL MOMENT IN THE DESIGN FIELD

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13858287@N06/6123997285/

As designers I believe we are inside a critical moment in our field.

The products and services we are creating are becoming complex beyond the point of understanding, the

algorithms which will power a lot of the ‘smart’ in these services is becoming so complicated no one person

can understand it.

DESIGNER’S RESPONSIBILITY

@olishaw

• Make sure that the ability of “decision’’ is still in their control

• That they understand of the value and potential applications of the information they are sharing or that

they’re generating with these new services

We need to better design how our users navigate these new relationships with the living services of

tomorrow and beyond.

WHAT QUALITIES SHOULD BE IN OUR DESIGNS?

@olishaw

We need to be considering how we can represent quality like:

ETIQUETTE FOR PERSONALISED SERVICES

@olishaw

Our design language needs to advocate a new form of etiquette for these personalised services. We don’t

want another Clippy, who didn’t even know when to keep silent.

DODISCRETION

APPROPRIATE

RELEVANCE

EMPATHY

@olishaw

DON’TPATRONISE

CONFUSE

OBSCURE

DICTATE

“Ambient commerce is about consumers turning over their

trust to the machine.”

Ebay’s Head of Strategy - John Sheldon

When consumers are no longer having to think about what the should chose, traditional marketing becomes

less relevant,

instead consumer decision is based on which company is providing the best service which really ‘gets them’,

the services which really ‘knows what I'm into’. What I want, when I want it, maybe even before I do.

AMBIENT SELECTIONNO DECISIONS NEEDED

The consumers don’t have to make choices any more, there ambiently selected by the service on behalf of

the user.

‘The data made me do it!’

@olishaw

As I consider the coming era of living, thinking, automated services, when the phrase “the data made me do it” is a valid rational.

TRUSTING SO MUCH WE CAN’T TELL

WHEN IT’S WRONG

Weather it’s making decisions for us or we are trusting it so much we cant tell when it is wrong.

PEOPLE’S RELATIONSHIP

WITH MACHINES IS CHANGING

@olishaw

Their relationship with machines is changing, they need help in adjusting to this new anticipated automated way of living,

DESIGN THE RELATIONSHIP

NOT JUST THE UX/UI

@olishaw

Anticipatory services and products which ambiently personalise themselves to you have much bigger design questions to

consider then what is the right message to send you [google now, you need to leave…]. There are questions around how

much it should reveal it knows about you - uncanny valley

Design the relationship, not just the UI or touch points

© FJORD 2013 Confidential Page

THANK YOU

74

@olishaw oli.shaw@fjordnet.com