AI as Infrastructure
Dan Hill is the director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, and author of Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary and Designing Missions. And heâs the opening speaker at the inaugural Designing with AI 2024 conference, where heâll be presenting âDesigning for the Infrastructures of Everyday Lifeâ.
Like it or not, AI is a growing part of our infrastructureânot just the infrastructure of our phones, our computers, and the internetâbut that of our physical world. Itâs increasingly used to support the very fundamental systems that maintain our cities, hospitals, utilities, and educational systems. On some levels, this is cause for concern. After all, weâve seen other implementations of AI (think riding-sharing services) that have not lived up to their promise but have instead aggravated some of the problems they sought to address.
Dan is a big-picture guy with an ability to draw principles from history and other sectors. He understands that utilizing AI is inevitable. The challenge is recognizing the interconnectedness of our various systems and working together to build infrastructures that truly create better life experiences for all.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- The many facets of infrastructures
- How AI is currently being used and how it might be used in the future to support our infrastructures
- Why ride-sharing is not exactly an AI model worth repeating
- Why the Japanese and Finnish models work well in those environments but arenât necessarily transferable to more diverse cultures
- Why quality of life will only improve with a more holistic, integrated design approach
Quick Reference Guide
0:37 – Introduction of Dan
3:49 – AI as infrastructure
8:30 – How AI might be used to further support infrastructure systems
12:09 – Will the impact of AI actually make life better?
18:59 – Plug for Managing Priorities by Harry Max. Get 15% off!
20:15 – The metaphor of designing looking through a lens and technologyâs impact on the material world
26:16 – Helpful models â the Japanese and Finnish cultures
31:52 – Danâs gift to the audience
Steve Sanderson and Lou Rosenfeld discuss how big organizations can hatch bold ideas.
Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Sanderson break down ways designers can use experimentation as a tool for innovation in enterprises. Steve also gives a preview to hot topics to be covered around innovating in big business at Enterprise UX, San Antonio, TX, May 13-15.
Donna Lichaw on Leadership Superpowers and Kryptonite
Not too long ago, Donna Lichaw, author of The Userâs Journey, was helping companies solve product problems by organizing the experience of a product or service into a narrative arc where the user is the hero.
Then she ran into a question that she couldnât shake â a question that, once answered, would morph her business from product development to leadership development. The question unveiled a people problem rather than a product problem.
âWe donât have problems bringing products into the world. We have problems getting along with everyone, feeling good about our work, building team morale, dealing with internal fighting. Weâve been helping our customers be heroes. How can I be a hero?â
Over seven years of researching how to help leaders be heroes, she found inspiration in a variety of places, including Gestalt therapy, narrative therapy, and executive and somatic coaching.
Her conclusion can be found in her new book, The Leaders Journey: Transforming Your Leadership to Achieve the Extraordinary. Think of the book as a map for people to become the natural leaders they already are and can be through a process of radical acceptance that leads to real, lasting change. People grow into superhero leaders when they fully embrace themselves â strengths and weaknesses.
Donnaâs approach to leadership is a refreshing departure from the typical advice of talk louder, take up more space, and listen more. This is a different â a journey that is unique to each individual.
⢠Discover your superpowers. When youâre not leveraging your superpowers at work, youâre not as powerful as you could be. When you contain your superpowers, youâll feel sad, depressed, and restricted.
⢠Know your kryptonite too. When you understand the âwhyâ behind your weaknesses, youâll often find a superpower underneath. By embracing your quirks and appreciating how they serve you, youâll open yourself to insights about how to move forward.
What youâll learn from this episode:
⢠Why Donna felt compelled to transition her business into leadership coaching
⢠About the two books Donna has written for Rosenfeld Media
⢠Why one-size-fits-all leadership programs are a dead end
⢠How appreciating your weaknesses can lead to self-discovery and growth
Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:51] Introduction of Donna Lichaw and a brief summary of her book The Userâs Journey
[0:02:23] About the origins of The Leaderâs Journey: Transforming Your Leadership to Achieve the Extraordinary, Donnaâs new book
[0:03:10] Donna recalls leading a workshop that raised an important question
[0:07:44] Looking for inspiration and resources to answer the question, âHow can I be a hero?â
[0:11:24] Finding value in everything, yet recognizing what is less helpful
[0:13:57] Dealing with leadership stereotypes and churn
[0:19:10] Enterprise UX 2023
[0:21:15] All leaders have superpowers and kryptonite
[0:26:06] Leaning into your personal kryptonite
[0:30:25] How the adult film industry and literary smut fit into all of this
[0:35:06] Donnaâs gift for listeners â access to her work!
Scaling a Design Team Across the World with Wendy Johansson
Whatâs it like to build out a design organization that spans many countries, languages, and culture? Wizeline co-founder Wendy Johansson discusses the insights she gleaned when opening a second Wizeline office in Guadalajara, then a third and fourth in Vietnam and Thailand. From different societal norms to language barriers, her story can inform your own ways of collaboration with new people and cultures, whether abroad or just within your own team.
Wendy recommends:
⢠The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer
⢠David Hoangâs Career Hype Doc
We’ll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech’s Nobility Complex
(Originally titled âMaking Uber More Efficient through Informed International Insightsâ)
Every design decision has the potential to include or exclude customers. Global Research emphasizes the contribution that understanding user diversity makes to informing these decisions, and thus to including as many people as possible. User diversity covers variation in capabilities, needs and aspirations. At Uber, the Global Scalable Research program is intended to influence product teams at HQ and around the world, to design and test in global regions: currently Mexico, India, Brazil. In this talk, Iâll discuss how we use Global Research to prioritize what product teams really need to build well and understand if their designs have relative ease of use that translates well to non-US users. Our Global Research priorities addresses some of the most challenging problems facing our global users today.
Keeping Up with Rapid GrowthâFrom Startup to Enterprise with Kit Unger
Kit Unger started her UX career as a âteam of one,â and now manages a team of over 30 people as Senior Director of Experience Design at Smartsheet. Weâre excited to have her as the leader of a group of presentations on âKeeping Up with Rapid Growth â From Startup to Enterpriseâ at Enterprise Experience 2020.
In this episode, she shares the role she wishes sheâd hired for 20 employees ago, the elements of scaling a team quickly, and offers a preview of her EX2020 speakersâ presentations.
UX Metrics That Matter and The Future of our Design at Scale Conference: A Community Conversation (Videoconference)
At our September Enterprise Experience Community call, we host a double-header of topics â âUX metrics that matterâ and âThe future of our conferenceâ. First, we have Jack Moffett, well-known design leader currently at Boeing, in a conversation about identifying and advocating for measurable user experience for enterprise apps and services.
#metoo and the IA Community: Karen McGrane and Lou Rosenfeld Confront a Difficult Topic
In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Karen McGrane and Lou address the growing concerns over sexual harassment at the IA Conference and other industry events. Karen and Lou explore the #metoo movement’s impact on the industry and what steps we can all take to address whatâs happening.
Charting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop (Videoconference)
Each year brings new advancements, challenges, and opportunities to the DesignOps community, but this time seems much differentâfor DesignOps people and the design profession in general. It may be high time to reexamine and re-map DesignOpsâ context, framing, and direction.
Weâre convening some of the leading DesignOps minds to reflect on the current state of our practice and its context and value in digital product and service organizationsâand we want you to be a part of it.
Watch the recording of this interactive moderated session with David Malouf, Patrizia Bertini, Peter Boersma, Theresa Slate, Z Zheng, Jon Fukuda, and Bria Alexander. Together we set the roadmap and framed our goalsâboth for the next DesignOps Summit and, more importantly, for the future of the DesignOps craft.
We spent time together mapping out new scenarios for DesignOps in Figjam, and we opened up the DesignOps Summitâs Call for Participation during the session.
Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance – what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
Airports are vital pieces of national infrastructure. They cost billions, and can take decades to design and deliver. We expect them to meet the day to day needs of millions of users, operate totally reliably, survive changing climate conditions, whilst providing a return on investment for their owners and operators. Stephen Pollard from Arup will explore the past present and future of a major airport in London, looking at challenges and successes to understand how best to manage design at the nexus of people, process, technology, and large complex assets.
