Spring is here!

And I mean not only the AI spring but the actual one as well ☀️! For me spring has always meant a time of new beginnings, hope, and opportunities, similarly, I try to see new emerging technologies ending up being good for us, instead of threatening our work, life, or happiness.

This April issue of our Design Breakfast newsletter is about designing products and services, which emerge from technological breakthroughs. What should we designers take into account when the starting point of a project is new technology and not a user need?

Meet our curator of the month

Markus Berg is a Principal Design Director at our Helsinki office and has been doing product design at Futurice for over 16 years. Coming from a semi-engineer-ish background, he’s always been very passionate about technology, and at the same time frustrated with its many implementations. When he’s not leading designers and design teams, he’s doing his part in making the digital world a better place for humans.

Markus' picks

Design in the era of the algorithm

By Josh Clark – Big Medium

Let’s start things off with this entertaining talk by Josh Clark! While the presentation itself is already seven years old, it highlights the roles and responsibilities of us designers in a way that is still quite relevant to this day. Starting from a practical take on dealing with the overconfidence of AI systems, it segues into how detrimental and sometimes even dangerous automated models can be if trained with biased and incomplete data. “You are your bot” is a sentence we all should keep in mind when designing for AI.

Designing breakthrough products

By Roberto Verganti – Harvard Business Review

Here’s the main course of this newsletter. Roberto Verganti writes about designers can make new technologies into technology epiphanies, creating products that are truly successful in the hands of their users. Using an example of Ambient Experience for Healthcare by Philips Electronis, Verganti challenges designers “to understand how those technologies could be used to address needs that customers may not realize they have”. Even for products driven by technology, always put “Meaning first, technology second”.

The UX of AI: Lessons from Perplexity

By Kate Moran – Nielsen Norman Group

This article is a synopsis of a great episode of the NN/g UX Podcast. Based on the experiences of creating the Perplexity AI, Henry Modisett talks about making AI user-friendly, and what makes a good AI consumer product for less tech-savvy people too. He claims that most LLM products should not be chats – something we have found to be quite true in the project I am currently working on. Check out the full podcast here, where the most interesting part starts at 15:03.

Know your curator better

Tell us about a project you’ve worked on that you found particularly interesting or challenging.

Directly related to the theme of this newsletter, I’m currently designing a Human-AI collaboration interface for an LLM-based process optimization tool for a large Finland-based company. I’ve learned that while AI is like magic in many cases, in some of the most surprising cases it’s not. For example, we’ve had to implement an interface for the user to tell the AI that “1, 3, 5, 7” contains four numbers, as it just can’t be taught to count!

How do you stay updated on the latest industry trends and technologies?

YouTube. I may watch it even a bit too much, but at least I don’t think I’ll be missing out on anything major! Channels like Marques Brownlee, The Verge, and Mrwhosetheboss keep you easily up to date with what’s happening in the realm of consumer technology, and point you in the right directions to learn more.

What emerging technologies or trends are you excited about?

When it comes to AI, especially multimodality comes to mind. In general it feels exciting, and scary, to be on the steep part of the S curve after a long while. Also, AR and spatial computing is such an interesting trend, as it’s a rapidly advancing field with still little to no actual, useful use cases. I still wouldn’t be surprised if this takes longer to age well!

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