Anticipate Weirdness: Josh Clark’s “Design in the Era of the Algorithm”

Machines are learning, but they still need human judgement

"Anticipate weirdness." That was the Hunter Thompson-esque advice from Josh Clark's November 14th presentation at Brooklyn UX. Computers are learning, but without human judgement, they can come to some pretty strange conclusions.

So close.

Clark, the founder of Big Medium, expounded on the promises and perils of algorithms, and the increasingly powerful machine learning now available to everyone from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google.

Thanks to the constant state of advancement, there is a natural tendency for users to expect more from technology than it can currently deliver (I'm still waiting for those flying cars promised by Blade Runner). This appears to be especially true for AI, which promises to be more disruptive than mobile smart phones have been, but which is still in it's infancy.

We all understand that machines are getting smarter, in that they are harvesting more data—about us and everything else—and that they have more capability to use that data to do all kinds of things, but Clark emphasizes the need for human input from designers and users, and he suggests ten design principals for managing data-driven products.

These ten principals, along with a video of the full presentation at a different event, are linked below.

Resources

Full video of Clark's presentation at a different venue
Meetup Page for Brooklyn UX