Insights 1.23

Design:

• A new design for football helmets using a series of replaceable panels that attenuate impact and reduce dangerous head injuries has found backing with a major manufacturer. It's expected to roll out with a handful of players in 2017. One thing potentially standing in the way of wider adoption is that the form of the helmet limits space available for logos - which is an unfortunate reflection of the competing priorities that designers run up against when developing a product that also has to meet desires of non-user decision makers. That universities would trade long-term health of players for more prominent graphics is a grim notion, but not altogether different from the discounting of the dangerous labor behind making so many of the beautiful objects we lust after. 
• Voice based interfaces like Amazon's Alexa are hugely popular but the secondary app marketplace that is supposed to help push usage up even more has a problem with discovery and retention, with people having a difficult time finding apps or their usage of apps falling off almost immediately. The design problem of learning what a limited system like Alexa "knows" is a significant obstacle for voice eclipsing graphical interfaces as the default for many tasks. Whatever the solution is, we think it's likely that adding apps or skills to a system like Alexa requires a heavily curated marketplace to avoid poor user outcomes.  

Up in the Air: 

• Anti-aircraft weaponry to combat (hypothetical) nefarious drones is in use at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Despite being referred to as guns many times in the article and captions, they don't fire any projectiles. Instead, the weapons jam electronic signals controlling the drone and cause it to loiter uselessly in the air, cut off from remote operation and unable to record video. The technology has been around for a bit, but recent reporting on expanded usage of consumer drones by ISIS for both surveillance and attack purposes is leading to an uptick of interest and deployment of jamming devices like these. This is part of the military technology cycle not often discussed: big defense spending often results in peaceful, commercial counterparts, but it also drives down the cost of some pretty sophisticated tech that can be re-purposed for guerrilla tactics. It's a great irony that the early adopters pay such a high price in dollars and development time for these innovations, only to have the cheap, toy versions thrown back at them. 

 

Automatons: 

• Terrestrial "drones" roll out in Washington D.C., their mechanical insides filled with things like burritos, pizza, or toilet paper. It's part of a partnership between gig-economy platform Postmates and the robotics company Starship. That autonomous machines are replacing human delivery in D.C. just as a President who talks frequently about reshoring (but rarely mentions how automation complicates the employment math of the 21st century) is an interesting juxtaposition.  It's also a complex situation for a company like Postmates to navigate: by spending time and money on automation instead of wages, they are increasing the animosity of the human labor force that they are still relying on. 

Touching Technology: 

• Hiawatha Bray at The Boston Globe with a story on reemergence of analog technologies. 2015 saw the largest expenditure on vinyl in almost 30 years, Kodak is back with a camera for shooting Super 8 film, and turntables powered by vacuum tubes are being manufactured anew. Though not analog in nature, even products like Fitbit live in the space of unnecessary throwback gadget: a software function that can run on your smartphone spun off into its own single-purpose tangible object. There are many reasons (both on the user and business sides) that analog or pseudo-analog devices persist even as "software eats the world" - one we talk about frequently is the deep evolutionary preference for the tangible, or the tendency to equate weight or smooth surfaces with value. In our always-on, networked world of information overload, the natural restriction of options that comes with analog (you can't have the range of albums on vinyl that Spotify offers, the ability to take unlimited photos presents problems of sorting and storing) can help to clear our minds a bit and help us to actually enjoy the experience itself, rather than being paralyzed by choices more vast than was imaginable. When the size of our systems outstrips our ability to comprehend them, it makes sense that we might choose to withdraw to something more knowable. 

Making Technology Work for Us: 

• On Being talks to Anil Dash about morality in a time when attention is bought and sold for the digital economy, contributing to the pushing and pulling of society by clickbait, fake news and feedback loops of twitter outrage fomenting anger. In particular, Anil Dash critiques the lack of ethics training in computer science education and how that contributes to dark patterns of data visualization and interfaces that make society a little worse off in the bargain. He offers some solid advice on how might re-make the tech industry to be more humane, and restore some of the good without reverting to an unplugged era. 
• The ad-hoc, choose-your-own-adventure nature of the internet has transformed political thought and action in ways that are hard to comprehend, much less control. The surprise election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the U.S. and the risks of filter bubbles on national discourse are indicators of those structural upheavals brought by the internet, but so are events like the Women's March that took place this past Saturday. Originally planned as a demonstration in Washington, D.C., the idea spread globally and protests were seen from Topeka, Kansas to Antarctica. By some estimations it was the largest protest in the history of the United States, and it all took place without one central organizing body, political personality, or interest group. While some nations are scrambling to turn more regressive, edifying borders and attempting to codify nationalism, people in the aggregate will always strive to be more free and use whatever tools and technologies available to them to make that vision a reality. 

More next week. 

Insights 1.16

Design:

• The U.S. mint has unveiled a new coin design that will depict Lady Liberty as a black woman. As a small symbolic step for a nation that has largely failed to reckon with the deep social impacts of slavery and the suppression of civil rights, it feels both right and wrong. On one hand making the image of a black woman into a definitive icon of the U.S. feels like progressive representation. On the other, the coin is commemorating the Mint's 225th anniversary: a span of time that significantly overlaps with slavery, when currency was exchanged for human lives existing far from anything resembling liberty. 
• Boston-based Altitude is the latest design consultancy to get acquired, in this case by the massive professional services firm Accenture. Accenture is no stranger to deals like this, having acquired the digital design agency Fjord back in 2015. Presumably they feel good about the value added by bringing a team of designers into the fold, which may signal other large firms (like McKinsey, the business consultancy that bought up the studio LUNAR) to keep collecting designers in order to feel like they are staying competitive. 

Up in the Air: 

• Lily Robotics, the follow-me drone startup that excited future users to the tune of $34 MM in pre-orders has announced that it is shutting down and refunding those payments. While many sources cited high manufacturing complexity coming up against inability to raise another round of investment in time as the cause of death, other sources indicate that they were being investigated for false advertising and deceptive practices. In either case, it sounds like they fell for a temptation common to inexperienced founders: to present grand promises with confidence, while behind the scenes the technology challenges are far from solved and hope to attract big money will give you the engineering ammunition to make the smoke and mirrors real before anyone catches on. 
• The French consumer electronics company Parrot is laying off around 290 employees in its drone division, making it the latest to shrink back in the face of Chinese drone maker DJI's success (3DR decided to stop building their own drones and cut staff back in March of 2016, GoPro laid off around 200 employees in December after their drone recall). While China has been disparaged in the past for producing inferior quality goods and failing to truly innovate, the global dominance of the DJI brand over many others is a real indication that such a narrative is no longer valid (if it ever was). 

 

Labor Pains: 

• Almost all of the jobs created in Canada last year were part time. 
• Few politicians mention automation when they talk (or tweet) about manufacturing, likely because it's a complex subject where the typical promises of STEM spending or re-shoring won't necessarily make things better for the general public (e.g. add a significant number of jobs or reduce overall wealth inequality). The math for ensuring mass employment in the future is going to be very different, and politicians would do well to imagine an entirely different employment landscape, rather than riffing on old models. 

Engineering Communities: 

• The fragmentation of media enabled by the internet has reduced the odds that we share cultural experiences with any given person in our city, state or nation. The article laments this fact as yet another membrane of our individual filter bubbles, amounting to a comforting but dangerous haze between us and the truth of the world. What is missing from this take is that the wide river of television's mainstream (mostly depicting stories of white, middle class, heterosexual characters) was never for everyone. Now more than ever we need to find ways to build positive change on a foundation of common ground, but it doesn't feel like we all need to be seeing or hearing the same stories for that to happen. Values of cosmopolitanism, not cultural hegemony, will be the path for getting to what's next. 

Bias & Brains: 

• Two stories of sloppy product development processes leading to black people being rendered literally invisible to the products they are using: one in software, another in hardware. The ignorance of design and engineering teams building these products for a global marketplace is pretty astounding. If these teams were more representative, their massive gaps in understanding would be solved almost immediately.

More next week. 

Insights 1.09

Design:

• IKEA has a new joinery method for their tables that looks pretty slick, robust, and cheap to make at scale. Notably, this innovation was arrived at by prototype engineers rather than designers sketching out possibilities on paper. As a team of designers who started as fabricators, it's a type of knowledge development and transfer that makes a lot of sense to us but is fairly rare in an era of work practices kept in their respective silos. Frontline workers across a company, in any department, should have channels to suggest improvements (with commensurate rewards for good outcomes) and those that find their work at the upper end of the ladder a little too clean should have more opportunities to get their hands dirty.

Energy: 

• A California senator is introducing legislation that would require new construction projects to include solar panels. California's energy and environmental policies are often ahead of the curve and later adopted in some form by other states, so this will be a bit of policy to keep a close eye on as we move towards a more sustainable energy future. Assuming it goes through, it could also be a big win for products like Tesla's Powerwall battery for residential energy storage.

 

Building Things: 

• The Brookings Institute, the DC area thinktank (typically described as centrist or somewhat liberal) has a piece on the potential for the so-called Maker Movement to act as a sort of traditional manufacturing alternative and bolster economic opportunities for blue-collar workers in the United States. While it's a nice thought, their case is flawed in a few key ways: these digital-fabrication enabled craft practices are rarely just blue collar, the typical "maker" also has skills in engineering or design, that these craft practices tend to employ very small teams, and the majority of the people working in these makerspaces have well paid, white-collar day jobs and are not exactly examples of rising economic opportunities for displaced blue-collar workers. Perhaps the biggest flaw here is that the Maker Movement itself is nothing new, really a rebranding of the kind of serious hobby-to-small business design and build practices that have existed for many decades. Rather than suggesting substitutes for some never-was golden age of manufacturing, we should be discussing what the needs of our best future will be, and what jobs will be required to meet them. 
• The Atlantic with another view of manufacturing in the U.S. - essentially that the country lost the "bad" manufacturing jobs (low skill, lower pay, highly repetitive) but has kept, and grown "good" manufacturing jobs that require higher levels of training and an agile approach to making goods that change design rapidly or are highly regulated.
• Not one to be discouraged, Keurig is trying to turn the same "Keurig Kold" technology that powered their soda-machine flop into another product line, this time for alcohol. 

Virtually There: 

• Snap Inc has acquired an augmented reality company based in Israel called Cimagine that had been developing software capable of  mapping a room and adding objects like furniture to the scene. It's a logical choice for the Snap extending their AR domain from faces to include the very spaces we live in. 

Roadmapping the Future: 

• William Gibson's seminal novel Neuromancer (often credited with defining the cyberpunk sci-fi sub-genre) has felt like the near future almost since it was published in 1984, with its dystopian details of military hacking, designer drugs and reality TV. Tech writer Jon Christian revisits the text to search for clues as to when the story takes place, finding it feels dangerously like our present moment: caught between the grand promises of technology and the worst aspects of human nature. 

More next week.