Last week, I visited the IA Conference, the so called class reunion of the German speaking information architecture and user experience community. IA stands for information architecture and in short describes the structure of a website or application which should support the user’s orientation. Sounds boring, right? The IA Conference was anything but boring! 😎 “Class reunion” - What a suitable description. The atmosphere was personal, open-minded and dynamic. Many curious people from all across Germany came together in order to learn and discuss about this year’s topic Smart Services. Trends such as connected cars, smart home or smart health have been topic number one. Of course I roughly knew what these services are about. What I was not aware about was the fact that they seem to be already a fixed component of today’s life.
The future is now
According to many excellent speakers, such as Klaas Wilhelm Bollhoefer or Rainer Sax, today’s product environment is about to start making use of artificial intelligence. Barriers of use in the development of any kind of product are decreasing over time. Did you know that an algorithm has been used to generate the shape for each of the 10,000 gypsum fiber acoustic panels of the walls of the newly opened concert hall in Hamburg, the Elbphilharmonie?
Moreover, there are self-driving cars or Prime Air for instance, a delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using drones. The more new and innovative products appear on the market, the more the mental models of the customers will change and with them their behavior and expectations. As Rainer Sax would point: “How could cleaning robots clean a room, when the floor is full of stuff?” We increasingly align our behavior to the systems’ requirements.
Assistants of our lives
Also voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant services entered the market. Have you already talked to famous Alexa? Assistants are intended to support us in our everyday life. With an assistant at home, we do not have to actively go to our sound boxes or open the Spotify app on our Smartphone when we want to listen to some music anymore. We simply have to talk to Alexa. “Alexa, play my chillout playlist!”
As Rainer Sax pointed out, people want assistants to be loyal companions which should at the same time have their own personality, but however be submissive. This was of course a topic for discussions.
Die Menschen wollen einen Assistenten, der Persönlichkeit zeigt, aber keine hat. @rainersax #iak17 #ai #trust
— Oliver Schirok (@schirok) 5. Mai 2017
With an assistant by our side, we still make decisions autonomously. However, as systems become more intelligent, they can take over more responsibility. Think about intelligent personal assistants in the medical context. What if the degree to which systems can make decisions autonomously will increase and doctors will not be needed anymore? I mean, look at self-driving cars. They would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, right?
When graphical interfaces become dialogs
With the so called conversational interfaces that appear on the market, also the daily work of UX experts will shift over time. Conversational interfaces cannot be conceptualized in mockups just the way graphical interfaces can. As Jörn Siedentopp stated, it is more about creating awesome dialogs. We will have to think about spoken conversation, the right degree of information and how to create personalities for assistants and skills. Jörn made some very insightful points what counts when it comes to prototyping dialogs. A good way to prove whether a dialog is good or not is to use the wizard of oz experiment where the system is simulated by a person. “It is like telling a joke - If you have to explain, you’re doing it wrong.”
Summing up…
The IA conference impressively pointed out in which direction product development is heading. The focus shifts from single devices to a holistic multi-device environment where different kinds of interfaces interact with each other. An environment, in which intelligent services take over more and more responsibility from the people who use them. Of course, we are not exclusively talking to Alexa yet if we want to listen to music. And not everyone uses self-driving cars. However, for me the IA conference was super insightful and I am curious what the organizers will prepare for the next time. So, see you next year! 😉
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