The digital products and services we use are becoming increasingly more ‘clever’ and ‘smart’. But before we make bold claims about predicting our customers’ actions, we first start by anticipating them (guestimates). In a single day we create extensive footprints of data. For starters, there are the points we earn on store loyalty cards, the way we interact with Facebook, and our activity in Google products. Plus we can self-track almost everything from sleep to exercise to mood. These data sets prove valuable in making the services we use more personalised. But, taking that idea further, we can now make things even more relevant to our desires. You will learn about: Anticipatory services Ambiently personalising products & services Combining data to generate better personalisation Examples of ambient personalisation in action The uncanny valley of personalisation The principals for making a great anticipatory service Talk given at: ConveyUX

1. ANTICIPATORY SERVICES &
AMBIENT PERSONALISATION
Oli Shaw | FJORD | Service Design Lead
@olishaw

2. I’M A SERVICE DESIGN LEAD @ FJORD
© FJORD 2013 Confidential
I'm a service designer at Fjord, we do assorts of things...
Page 2

3. Design of new
consumer services
Re-imagination of
the phone bill
Design for data
England riots: what happened to the rioters?
Retail price of roasted coffee, 2013
INNOVATI
ON
Re-imagination of
healthcare
© FJORD 2013 Confidential
Page 3

4. FOR THIS TALK, THINK BEYOND:
THE UI
WHICH DEVICES

5. LIVING SERVICES
@olishaw
My focus in recent years has been around 'Living services'...in particular I’ve been exploring and experimenting with a few
key questions

6. What is our relationship to
the invisible systems which
power these services?
@olishaw

7. How are these services
learning about us, and
personalising themselves
to our needs?
@olishaw

8. How are they
anticipating our needs,
before we have them?
@olishaw

9. DESIGN CHALLENGES TODAY
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10247381@N02/10414030285/
Designers already face a number of challenges to overcome...
Designing products and services today has an exponential amount of challenges to overcome from kick-off to delivery,
there is a mountain of technological devices where the experience can be had, there is an ever increasing amount of
content to be navigated and consumed.

10. RESPONSIVE,
ADAPTIVE, AGNOSTIC,
AND SOON
ANTICIPATORY
IN SOME CASES HAVING
AMBIENT ATTRIBUTES.
Being a designer today demands that your work is appropriately considerate of: Responsive, adaptive, agnostic, and soon
anticipatory in some cases ambient attributes.

11. “The future is already
here - it's just not
evenly distributed”
William Gibson
With my work, and in general, I spend a lot of time thinking and exploring the future. To expand on the quote “The future is
already here – it's just not evenly distributed” (William Gibson),

12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/35434449@N08/5837104559/
“The future is already
here - it's just not
evenly distributed”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54450095@N05/9690003914/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35434449@N08/6101048472/
While we have been so distracted by wearables, glassholes and self-driven cars, there has been a much more profound
future which has inserted itself into our lives.

13. ANTICIPATORY SERVICES &
AMBIENT PERSONALISATION
@olishaw
So to todays focus: Anticipatory services & Ambient personalisation.

14. THE OBVIOUS PERSPECTIVE:
BIG DATA & ANALYTICS
There is an obvious perspective on anticipatory services, which is from the view of technology, which inevitable goes in to
the topics of data analytics, big data and such.
I can happily talk to you about algorithms and sensors, in fact come an chat to me latter if you are interested in this area...

15. LENSES OF ‘HUMAN’ & ‘DESIGN’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51324001@N05/4817484054/
but there is another perspective, that of the design view, from the human point of view...

16. Designing our relationship
with modern services.
@olishaw
I see this as ‘designing our relationship with modern services’

17. “Just do it for me”
“It just works”
“I’m lazy”
“Ain’t got time for that”
What I hear a lot of common views with regards to products and technology is:
"it just works", "Just do it for me", "I'm Lazy"
and generally everyone is so busy with life they "ain't got time for that"
And the answer to these questions?

18. ‘SMART’
Lets make it ‘smart’ - smart tvs, smart phones, smart websites, smart apps...

19. SMART FRIDGE...
Lets start with the smart fridge, the thing we so often love to hate on. A smart fridge will do any number of
features, however the question I always find my self asking is where should the 'smart' live in this process?
Zooming out, what is the motivation, need or behavior here?
I need to eat, I need to have food in my house to feed myself... if this is the challenge/issue why is a fridge
the answer?

20. 1. NEED FOOD
2. CHOOSE FOOD
3. ORDER FOOD
?
7. CHOOSE FOOD
8. PREPARE FOOD
examining the process:
I dispose of waste food
I eat food
I prepare food
I choose what to eat
I store food
I purchase food
I order food
I choose food
I desire food?
why not
6. STORE FOOD
9. EAT FOOD
5. BUY FOOD
10. DISPOSE WASTE FOOD

21. Where should the
‘smart’ live?
why can the smart not live in another area, other then a smart fridge?

22. QS SERVICE
DIET SERVICE
SMART GROCERY STORE
?
RECIPE FINDER APP
SMART KITCHEN
SMART COOKER
SMART BANK
SMART FORK
should it live in:
The place I choose food? Do I want to cook or take-out?
Is it from my online grocery store?
is it in the fridge, the cooker, my iPad where I have a cook book?
is it the whole kitchen?
is it my quantified self tracker as I eat the food, suggesting what and when I should eat next?
or is it the smart bin, which know what I have thrown out, and orders more
SMART BIN

23. WHY SHOULD SMART LIVE IN
THE FRIDGE?
Why should the smart live in the fridge?
Do I want X talking to X?
What happens when they disagree?
How should the smart work together?
Who is the leader?

24. INVISIBLE SYSTEMS
POWERING THE SMART
When you get into it, it becomes more about the design of the relationship we have with these living services,
these smart systems which are already becoming part of our lives.
But so much of what makes these services is actually invisible to the user...

25. EXAMPLE OF
TODAYS SERVICES:

26. WHAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO BUY
Today. Amazon tells us what else we might like to read or buy,

27. WHO YOU MIGHT KNOW
Facebook & LinkedIn tell us whom we might know

28. WHAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO WATCH
and Netflix tell us what we might like to watch.

29. WHAT TEMPERATURE YOU WOULD LIKE
more relevantly nest anticipate what temperature we would like

30. WHEN TO LEAVE
google now does a few things based on anticipating our needs

31. EXAMPLE OF
TOMORROWS
LIVING SERVICES:
In tomorrows living services we might encounter scenarios like these examples:

32. If you pay an extra
£50 a month you’ll
end your mortgage
3 years early
MORTGAGE
Say I have a mortgage, I login to my mortgage service, it offers me a suggestion; that if I pay an extra £50 a
month overpayment on my mortgage I could pay it off 3 years earlier. And you know, I’ll consider that and I
might just do it, more then that I'd be happy with the service making that suggestion to me.

33. If you pay an extra
£50 a month you’ll
end your mortgage
3 years early
MORTGAGE
Looking at your current
account, you could spend £50
a month less on Dominos Pizza
and put it towards
your mortgage
Take the same scenario an push it a bit further, I have a mortgage, the service suggest I pay an extra £50 a
month, but this time the service goes a bit further, the service has in the background reviewed my current
account and has identified that I’m regularly spending money on dominos pizza, its seen that I’m ordering
once or twice a week. Using this insight the service has suggested that I could have one less take away from
dominos each week, I'd have that £50 to put towards my mortgage. In essence the service is now telling me
that I could be better spending my money on my Mortgage then on a ‘luxury’ of a pizza each week. In
principle this suggestion is coming from a place of good, I probably shouldn’t be eating so much take out
and if I can pay my mortgage off fast I probably should.

34. DO I WANT THE
SERVICE MAKING THAT
SUGGESTION TO ME?
But do I want the service making that suggestion to me?
Take it a step further still, say I agree with the service and I let it know that I’ll not spend on pizza and put it
towards my mortgage. Now its late one evening; I decide that ‘you know what… to hell with it’, I’ll get a pizza, but
then the order is declined, the payment won’t go though the service has decided that I shouldn’t be ordering
pizza, which I had agreed with and it is ‘helping me’ by preventing me!!!!.
Now I need an override button, but you know that it isn’t going to be easy to find, all in the name of helping me,
help myself.

35. CAR INSURANCE
Say I’m a young driver and my insurance is astronomically high, how about a service which can offer you
cheaper insurance based on how you as an individual actually drive, a good way of bringing your car
insurance cost down.

36. [video of Ingenie advert]
The Ingenie ‘black box’ as they call it can monitor how you drive: including speed, acceleration, breaking and
cornering.
So what happens when they map this with GPS tracking, they can know if you where speeding and probably
much more then that. What happens then, do they automatically report you to the police, and the first thing
you know about it is a speeding fine through the post? Or if your and your black box where to be involved in
an accident it will create a new layer of detail to the crime scene model, yet this will only cover the
telematics and not necessarily the whole picture of the accident.

37. You know theres an ideal
role coming up for you...
CHANGING JOBS
How about if LinkedIn could predict when you where unhappy and potentially looking to change jobs, what
if it could make some helpful suggestion on which companies where likely to be interested in someone with
your skills and experience, better then that they have recently had a few people leave in similar roles so its
likely that they might be looking and then the service helps you contact the right person to enquire about a
job.

38. CHANGING JOBS
Here is a chart of who is
most likely to leave:
But turn that round and look at it from an employers perspective, LinkedIn provide a service to companies in
which it will give them a chart showing the employees which have been scored and are most likely to be
looking to leave, sometimes even before the fully realise themselves.

39. HOW ABOUT
SOMETHING MORE
PERSONAL...

40. How about if Facebook could use it’s analysis of your actions on the site to anticipate when you where likely to
breakup with your partner?

41. “Too much change in too short
a period of time”
Alvin Toffler
But…As soon as we have fully realised the necessary infrastructure, these plausible futures will rocket
forwards advancing our lives at such a speed we won't have enough time to; understand or learn the
systems.
Alvin Toffler wrote about this very notion in his book Future Shock, he described it as "too much change in
too short a period of time".

42. EMOTIONS OF
PERSONALISATION
@olishaw
As designers there is a much greater challenge ahead of us. It moves far beyond the creation of the UI of a product or the
experience design of a service. Smart services, ambiently personalise themselves to us.
Designers need to consider the emotional aspects of what it means to have a service personalised to the individual.

43. UNCANNY VALLEY
There is an uncanny valley of personalisation

44. UNCANNY VALLEY OF PERSONALISATION
surprisingly helpful
I don't mind you knowing
I want you to know
I don’t want you to know
How do you know that?
@olishaw
uncanny valley of personalisation:
I want you to know
I don't mind you knowing
I don't want you to know/share that
How the hell do you know that?
delight & surprise

45. RELEVANT
CREEPY
Where is the line between a useful relevant service and one, which has more similarities to something creepy
and like a stalker?

46. ADVICE
PARENTING
Where is the line between a service that advises and a service that parents you?
Are these services going to be more like Butlers who stand back when not needed, keep’s your secrets and
makes suggestions for you to act on or ignore as you see fit.
Or are these services going to be more like parents who remove decision from our control, who act on our
behalf in our best interest without consulting us, like an authoritative figure in our lives?

47. UNFAMILIAR
HUMAN + MACHINE
TERRITORY
@olishaw
We are taking our users into new uncharted ‘human + machine’ territory.

48. WE ARE TRANSITIONING
THE RELATIONSHIPS OUR
USERS ARE HAVING WITH
THESE SERVICES, SYSTEMS
& MACHINES.
@olishaw
We need to remember that through our designs we are transitioning the relationships our users are having
with these; services, systems and machines.

49. SERVICES WHICH CAN:
ANTICIPATE, ADAPT &
AUTOMATICALLY MAKE
DECISIONS FOR THEM
@olishaw
In which our users are forced to experience new and complex emotions, as they’re now faced with a service
that can anticipate their needs, adapt to their situation and in some cases automatically make decisions on
their behalf.

50. CHOICE IS
REPLACED
BY TRUST
@olishaw
and choice is replaced by trust.
From a brand perspective, the future is looking very interesting...as trust is a key attribute for almost every
brand

51. BRAND TRUST: WHAT IF...
APPLE DID BANKING?
VOLVO DID HEALTHCARE?
LV DID TAKE-OUT DINNERS?
What if..?
The more the services learn about us, the more personalised they can become, and the more we need to
have trust in them.

52. Data leaks will become much more of an issue for brands to contend with.

53. Especially when they contain enough information about us to anticipate very personal things

54. INVITED PERSONALISATION
VS
UNINVITED PERSONALISATION
@olishaw
invited personalisation vs uninvited personalisation
what happens when you don't know its happening?

55. Scanning your face and profiling you at the checkout

56. But what happens when is less obvious? Like with these harmless adverts on bins...

57. Data including the "movement, type, direction, and speed of unique devices"
was recorded from smartphones that had their Wi-Fi on.
It can record Movement, type direction and speed of a unique device

58. "It provides an unparalleled insight into the past behavior of
unique devices -- entry/exit points, dwell times, places of
work, places of interest, and affinity to other devices -- and
should provide a compelling reach data base for predictive
analytics (likely places to eat, drink, personal habits etc.),"
which can reveal places of work, places of interest, affinity to other devices (people) and can lead to predictions
about personal habits!

59. "as some of the technology we will
be testing will be on the boundaries
of what is regulated and discussed it
is our intention to discuss it publicly”
Renew London CEO Kaveh Memari
at the discretion of the companies

60. TECHNOLOGY IS
ADVANCING FASTER
THEN THE LAWS
THAT PROTECT US
@olishaw
Technology is advancing faster then the regulations are changing.

61. MELTING POT OF
SENSORS, ANALYTICS,
MACHINE VISION, BIG
DATA, ALGORITHMS
AND MORE.
@olishaw
To design the next and future waves of services, we need to invest the time to learn how this new technology
works. Living services will be a melting pot of sensors, analytics, machine vision, big data, algorithms and
more.

62. UTOPIA OR
DYSTOPIA
@olishaw
There is a clear utopian vision of what personalisation can do for us as individuals, but there are also a very
real dystopian consequences to what this personalisation ability opens the door to.
In this beginning of a design future thesis, I have explored some speculative thoughts, partly because right
now we are not quite over the technology hump of having connected information flowing between systems
and services. But…As soon as we have fully realised the necessary infrastructure, these plausible futures will
rocket forwards advancing our lives at such a speed we won't have enough time to; understand or learn the
systems.

63. WE ARE AT A CRITICAL MOMENT
IN THE DESIGN FIELD
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13858287@N06/6123997285/
As designers I believe we are inside a critical moment in our field.
The products and services we are creating are becoming complex beyond the point of understanding, the
algorithms which will power a lot of the ‘smart’ in these services is becoming so complicated no one person
can understand it.

64. DESIGNER’S
RESPONSIBILITY
@olishaw
•
Make sure that the ability of “decision’’ is still in their control
•
That they understand of the value and potential applications of the information they are sharing or that
they’re generating with these new services
We need to better design how our users navigate these new relationships with the living services of
tomorrow and beyond.

65. WHAT QUALITIES
SHOULD BE IN
OUR DESIGNS?
@olishaw
We need to be considering how we can represent quality like:

66. ETIQUETTE FOR PERSONALISED SERVICES
@olishaw
Our design language needs to advocate a new form of etiquette for these personalised services. We don’t
want another Clippy, who didn’t even know when to keep silent.

67. DO
DON’T
DISCRETION
PATRONISE
APPROPRIATE
CONFUSE
RELEVANCE
OBSCURE
EMPATHY
DICTATE
@olishaw

68. “Ambient commerce is about
consumers turning over their
trust to the machine.”
Ebay’s Head of Strategy - John Sheldon
When consumers are no longer having to think about what the should chose, traditional marketing becomes
less relevant,
instead consumer decision is based on which company is providing the best service which really ‘gets them’,
the services which really ‘knows what I'm into’. What I want, when I want it, maybe even before I do.

69. AMBIENT SELECTION
NO DECISIONS NEEDED
The consumers don’t have to make choices any more, there ambiently selected by the service on behalf of
the user.

70. ‘The data made
me do it!’
@olishaw
As I consider the coming era of living, thinking, automated services, when the phrase “the data made me do it” is a
valid rational.

71. TRUSTING SO MUCH
WE CAN’T TELL
WHEN IT’S WRONG
Weather it’s making decisions for us or we are trusting it so much we cant tell when it is wrong.

72. PEOPLE’S
RELATIONSHIP
WITH MACHINES
IS CHANGING
@olishaw
Their relationship with machines is changing, they need help in adjusting to this new anticipated automated
way of living,

73. DESIGN THE
RELATIONSHIP
NOT JUST THE UX/UI
@olishaw
Anticipatory services and products which ambiently personalise themselves to you have much bigger design questions to
consider then what is the right message to send you [google now, you need to leave…]. There are questions around how
much it should reveal it knows about you - uncanny valley
Design the relationship, not just the UI or touch points

74. THANK YOU
@olishaw
oli.shaw@fjordnet.com
© FJORD 2013 Confidential
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