What do we sense is happening out there and how is it making us feel good (or bad) and more curious for the future?
A set of three things that stand out for me.
- Critically Making: Considered construction of products and services for utility or superiority.
- ? Useful
- ? Cool
- Trust Me/Who?: Cloud-based systems let us live easier by giving up all of our privacy. Huh?
- ? Defense
- ?? Offense
- Going Retro: Some things are always better done the old way when they represent the good way.
- ?? Handcraft
- ? Speedcraft
Visual summaries by Tony Ruth are available for all three mixes.
?Useful means solving a specific problem or a set of problems, and in tech that’s not 100% clear sometimes.
- Meals-on-demand Munchery*
- Parking-on-demand Luxe*
- Shipping-on-demand Shyp*
- Laundry-on-demand Washio*
- Cleaning-on-demand Homejoy*
*All of these venture-backed startups have closed.
?Cool means having a tech WOW factor, and there are more than a few things that fall under that category.
- Robots
- VR
- Voice
- AR
- AI**
**Highlight is covered in our special section “Yaaaaaaawn. Boring A.I.” In that section we’ll cover a few interesting ?useful things.
The software industry is poised to embrace its craft heritage.
—@johnmaeda (me) in 2010 for Your Life In 2020 for Forbes
It’s not difficult to find examples of companies making questionable product decisions, especially when it comes to your data and privacy. There can be many reasons why the ethical design path is not chosen, but there is one common factor?—?there are people, such as managers, engineers, and/or designers, behind each choice.”
—Holly Habstritt Gaal
You can pre-order How To Speak Machine: Laws of Design for a Computational Age from IndieBound to support independent book stores, or
Barnes & Noble as a non-Amazon alternative, or Amazon because 80% of us tend to choose this route.
You’re done with section 4 of the report. There’s 2 more to go.
Next up is … (