Day: November 5, 2019

By Steven Hoober In addition to the misuse, misunderstanding, and bad implementations of perfectly good UX design patterns, we’ve long understood the concept of anti-patterns. These are things that we know don’t work well for users. We’ve clearly defined and documented them so we can avoid using them. However, as much as I’ve studied the concept of pattern languages and libraries, as cynical as I am about how businesses use and abuse product design, I simply didn’t expect the rise of dark patterns. Dark patterns are design patterns that are effective, but evil. When they succeed, they drive users to make accidental or uninformed decisions against their best interests. During the creation of dark patterns, there’s typically much argument that they are positive for the business, that they expose ideas and encourage behaviors that the average person would do. I don’t think I need to convince you that businesses often Read the full article…

By Robert M. Schumacher and Gavin Lew For machine-learning (ML) scientists to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems and algorithms, they need data. They collect many of the datasets they use to build AI systems from human behaviors and people’s interactions with the technology they use in their everyday lives. Whether the data comprise a set of liver-disease diagnoses and outcomes, come from a consumer survey on attitudes toward marijuana usage, or derive from active/passive data collection of spoken phrases, AI systems always need training data to ensure their algorithms produce the right outcomes. Such data can frequently be hard to come by. And even once ML scientists have acquired a dataset, how can we be sure that it includes what an AI system needs? Read the full article…

By Jonathan Walter Many articles about UX leadership focus on what managers do or target those who have direct reports. Such articles typically cover building a UX culture, hiring the right people, developing people, and of course, selling the value of User Experience to the C-suite. While these are all valuable pursuits that are vitally important to building a user-centered culture in your company, leadership does not end with directors, managers, or even team leads. Leadership extends to individual contributors, too. In fact, depending on your company’s UX maturity level, leadership arguably begins with individual contributors—perhaps you, the UX designer. Unfortunately, UX designers are often in short supply in large enterprise environments, in comparison to people in information technology, engineering, and marketing roles. This, in turn, perpetuates scenarios in which UX designers must be, in equal parts, practitioners, evangelists, and presenters—roles that together exceed the scope of what most UX Read the full article…