My Favorite Design Articles of 2018
Are these even “design” anymore? Who knows.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence, Shan Carter
[I]f some representation is truly new, then it will appear different than anything you’ve ever seen before. Feynman’s diagrams, Picasso’s paintings, Stravinsky’s music: all revealed genuinely new ways of making meaning. Good representations sharpen up such insights, eliding the familiar to show that which is new as vividly as possible. But because of that emphasis on unfamiliarity, the representation will seem strange: it shows relationships you’ve never seen before. In some sense, the task of the designer is to identify that core strangeness, and to amplify it as much as possible.
Ways to think about machine learning, Ben Evans
Five years ago, if you gave a computer a pile of photos, it couldn’t do much more than sort them by size. A ten year old could sort them into men and women, a fifteen year old into cool and uncool and an intern could say ‘this one’s really interesting’. Today, with ML, the computer will match the ten year old and perhaps the fifteen year old. It might never get to the intern. But what would you do if you had a million fifteen year olds to look at your data? What calls would you listen to, what images would you look at, and what file transfers or credit card payments would you inspect?
Predictably Smart, Kristie Fisher
ML algorithms will make bad predictions. Try to imagine what a user’s process for completing the action without ML assistance would be, as well as the user’s process to correct a potential ML failure. If it’s more work for the user to correct a failure than it is for them to complete the process without having the assistance of ML in the first place, then machine learning is not actually creating a better experience.
Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo, Natasha Iskander
Design thinking privileges the designer above the people she serves, and in doing so limits participation in the design process. In doing so, it limits the scope for truly innovative ideas, and makes it hard to solve challenges that are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty — like climate change — where doing things the way we always have done them is a sure recipe for disaster.
Gibson’s Bankruptcy is a Cautionary Tale about Corporate “Innovation”, Matt LeMay
Gibson didn’t go bankrupt because they failed to innovate — they went bankrupt because they were obsessed with innovation. Innovation at all costs. Innovation over the objections of their most loyal customers — and in spite of their own sales figures.
The UX of AI, Josh Lovejoy
If the goals of an AI system are opaque, and the user’s understanding of their role in calibrating that system are unclear, they will develop a mental model that suits their folk theories about AI, and their trust will be affected.
Robot Keggers and Roomba Spies, Chris Nossel
If the user has no preferences for what brand of, say, a brand of shampoo they use, what’s the harm in letting Amazon recommend a partner? It’s a small personal cost, but the “friendly” recommendation may prioritize products that run counter to your ethics, pocketbook, or interests.
What walls are for, Leisa Reichelt
Digital things look ‘finished’ too soon. when something is a work in progress on a wall, it looks unfinished, so you keep working on it. moving things around, reshaping things, connecting things, erasing things, and making them again. Walls make it easier to iterate. Iteration, in my opinion, is massively correlated with quality.
The 50/50 Murder, Rob Reid
[W]hen the odds of a calamity flirt with zero, we’ll serenely court outcomes as awful as death. Daily life would be impossible otherwise. No one likes to dwell on this reality. But it doesn’t violate our intuitions, because we realize that countless people die in the midst of truly mundane tasks.
