At last night’s Design Work, the Future of UX, it was clear that people are eager to know where new technology is leading us. The evening was framed by questions such as: Will visual designers continue to have a purpose? Will AI relationships replace our corporeal ones? And more pertinent questions like, does the future of UX involve solving San Francisco’s traffic issues?
There are still many challenges ahead (data, privacy, and the psychological implications), yet the panelists, Agatha Yu (Product Designer, Oculus), Daniel Padgett (Conversation Design Lead, Google), Tikva Morowati (Independent Design & Product Owner) & Stefan Andrizzi (Creative Director Alexa Voice, Amazon Devices and Services) assured us the future of UX is also rich and exciting. Here are our three key takeaways from the evening.
It’s about building a more accessible world. From creating more technological and social access for the blind to building bridges over language barriers and creating new mediums for people to express themselves, user experience is evolving how we access one another, the spaces we inhabit and ourselves.
Brands will have to literally define their voice. Sound contains a plethora of nuanced meaning— the intonation of a single word can convey a great deal about who we are and how we feel. The same goes for AI. Brand designers will need to think critically about how their products are defined by sound, and how to scale the scope of language in order to build trust and define meaning with their users.
The virtual will never replace physical. You can’t capture all of our sensory experiences within the virtual world; you can’t feel the texture or smell the air. The hope is that experiencing a new virtual reality, will encourage you to also go experience it in real life. Perhaps it will even have the skype effect - just as people once feared Skype would make us travel less, in turn, the opposite has happened.
A big thanks to our moderator Amy Stellhorn, Founder & CEO of Big Monocle for always keeping the conversation fresh and interesting!
Mark your calendars! The next D//W will be on February 8th. See all of our upcoming events here.