Algorithms, Machine Learning, AI and us designers

Chat bots. Siri. Conversational UIs. No UIs. Driverless cars... the Singularity?

There seems to be an awakening around artificial intelligence, and we are experiencing it today. What does that mean for us designers?

To help us get our heads around the topic and how it relates to interaction design, we have two talks by Giles Colborne and IBM Watson designers Ed Moffatt and John Morgan.

Will it lead us to discuss our roles around designing for AI-based user experiences, or down the rabbit hole of what will happen to us when the machines take over? Get a ticket and find out!

We are supported, as always, by our friends from Futureheads — thank you, guys. Also, thanks to Pivotal Labs for letting us be the first event group to use their amazing new office space. We will be well-behaved.

To get to the Pivotal's office, access the path to the right of Shoreditch Grind and keep walking past until you see the main entrance of the building. Google maps here: https://goo.gl/maps/Y76AygcFwC52

We take a refundable £10 to help minimise no-shows. If you have a ticket and can't make it, let us know asap - we'll process refunds given a 1-day notice. This allows time for folks on the waitlist to get one.

Interaction Designers vs The Machine. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love algorithms — Giles Colborne

Are interaction designers about to be made redundant by a new wave of user experiences where algorithms create the value and flow? In this talk, Giles will be talking about designers at cxpartners, AirBnB and Spotify create user experiences with algorithms at their core; why algorithms are the new 'usability fail’; and exploring our role and whether we will continue to be able to bring humanity to a future that’s governed by machines.

Giles Colborne (@gilescolborne) cofounded cxpartners in 2004; it has grown to become one of the world’s leading independent experience design consultancies working on next-generation experience design, generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for companies such as Marriott, eBay and AXA. His book, Simple and Usable, has sold tens of thousands of copies in Europe and North America and has been translated into Chinese and Korean. Giles is former president of the UK UPA, co-chair of IA Summit, and UX Awards judge. He has worked with the British Standards Institute in developing standards for web accessibility.

Ed and John talk about IBM Watson

How do you measure the performance of an AI system? We'll present examples and arguments for and against various different metrics that can be looked at.

How do you get people to train an AI from scratch without making them feel that the AI is "dumb" because they're having to tell it everything?

This is an interesting UX challenge that we're always coming across, and we'll show some specific IX things we've done to address it in Watson, plus some examples of how others have taken a different approach.

John Morgan BSc, MA — Lead Designer on IBM Watson.

John has 6 years experience as a designer, working in a wide range of industries. He joined IBM in 2014 and has since designed for IBM Security products and his current focus IBM Watson.

Ed Moffatt — UK Design Manager, IBM Watson

Ed's somewhat inconsistent back story includes a degree in Mathematics, work developing and testing software and hardware, managing internship programs, UX and Visual design. He's now UK Design Manager on IBM's artificial intelligence software, Watson. Outside work, he does art and video game design for the indie studio he founded, and plays in a prog rock band.