Designing smart things: Balancing ethics and choice

About this presentation

<p>The design community has gotten very skilled at crafting UIs, whether on a screen, through voice technology, or even via gestures, even as products like the Nest thermostat, the software running wind turbines, and autonomous cars are increasingly automating choices to simplify their use for people. While data scientists and AI experts are becoming more adept at delivering these algorithms, there hasn’t been enough discussion about their impact on design practice. </p> <p>As the technology we use becomes more intelligent, empowered, and automated, how will we designers need to evolve our practice? And how do we, as stewards of user needs and rights, ensure that the algorithms people use actually reflect the moral and ethical choices we might make as humans? Is that even the goal? Gretchen Anderson explores the challenges we face when designing the user experiences of the complex behavioral agents that increasingly run our lives.</p>