Category: Interaction Design

You might have thought by reading the title that this text would be about the moral choices our society might face with the arrival of high technology. However, I must disappoint you: this time I really want to talk about the prices of the various technologies of our time and their return on investment in the industry. In this context, the technologies that concern us in our everyday lives and are aimed at the end user are particularly interesting, which is what I want to reflect on in this article.

To begin with, it is important to talk about the profitability of products, and for this it is important to know its definition and how it is calculated: The profitability helps to determine the return on investment of a product in relation to the value of the investment. In its simplest form, the return on a product is calculated quite simply: the product’s profit should be divided by the capital invested in it, so you get the right percentage. Now that we’ve got the calculations figured out, we can move on to practice: What exactly does this mean for high tech companies? According to Forbes, it’s the return on investment that will drive the tech startup market in the coming years. The author writes that the crises of recent years have changed the market dramatically and investments will be harder to come by and younger companies will have to wait longer to bring their products to market. However, according to the same article, cloud services will continue to be popular despite the recession and are therefore a worthwhile investment when it comes to product returns.

But the casual reader might ask: but what about the meta-universe and neural networks? They, and not cloud services, are now being talked about all over social networks, the biggest businessmen like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg are taking them so seriously that they are not afraid to make big announcements about the future of such technologies, are they not paying off, is it all a trick? This is not the easiest question to answer. On the one hand such technologies from entertainment industries create a lot of hype around them, thus attracting attention and investors, on the other hand it must be understood that many statements by celebrities rather describe a utopia associated with them or a higher idea that is far from being realized and has little to do with payback at the moment, usually when it comes to innovation. Take for example the meta-universe that Mark Zuckerberg so often talks about in 2021:

“Metaverse isn’t a thing a company builds. It’s the next chapter of the internet overall.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta. (Carlson, 2022).

According to experts, the idea of a meta-universe is 8 or even 10 years away from being realised. Further growth of the idea, the author writes, will depend on both clarity of the product’s return on investment, and the readiness of industry and technology talent. And despite predictions that the meta-universe could already be used in some industry sectors by 2030, at this point it’s hard to talk about a payback for the next few years because it’s at the minimal viable product stage.

While many people fear losing their jobs because of the abilities of neural networks and nervously check willrobotstakemyjob.com, the situation around artificial intelligence is not much different from the one in which the meta-universe is: according to the latest McKinsey data, adoption of such processes has doubled since 2017, but a rather small number of companies (10%) report a payback in business. Experts attribute this to the fact that neural networks require careful and voluminous data work, which some firms lack the resources to do. This is why industry giants such as Google and Amazon are likely to offer their solutions and services to small businesses going forward. This is why artificial intelligence is still at an early stage of development and needs to identify applications.

What conclusions can be drawn from the above? Technology Payback is not always about press coverage or innovation, much more often it’s just about what a technology can (probably) pay for itself in a decade or so. Far more often the payback technologies are not in the limelight but in niche areas that do not come to the mind of the average person to begin with, such as cloud services, which, mind you, just enjoyed immense popularity in the press 10 years ago.

References:

Raynovich, S. R. (2023, January 25). Inside the Trends Driving Top Cloud Startups In 2023. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rscottraynovich/2023/01/25/inside-the-trends-driving-top-cloud-startups-in-2023/

Carlson K., Austin American-Statesman. (2022, March 16). At SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg says metaverse is “Holy Grail” of social experience. Austin American-Statesman. https://eu.statesman.com/story/business/2022/03/16/sxsw-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-says-metaverse-future-internet/7051230001/

Desk, T. (2023, January 25). Widespread metaverse adoption still years away, despite strong early signals: NASSCOM. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/metaverse-adoption-nasscom-report-8402349

Author, G. (2023, January 7). AI goes mainstream, but return on investment remains elusive. SiliconANGLE. https://siliconangle.com/2022/12/29/ai-goes-mainstream-return-investment-remains-elusive/

A large proportion of people who develop a mental illness still do not seek professional help. When it comes to therapy, there are many prejudices, expectations and myths that fuel fear of psychotherapy. Individuals fear judgment, change, the unknown, and what they might discover in therapy. Some people are too prideful to admit they need help. Others would like to have therapy but lack the monetary means to afford it. Or they have to wait forever to get into therapy.

Fears and stigma

Sometimes the way to psychotherapy can be complicated by thoughts like ” My environment will think I’m crazy”. Isn’t therapy only something for people who are crazy or simply weak? In fact, such prejudices still exist in society today. This can create a fear of being judged for seeking therapy.
On the other hand, the fact that the decision to undergo psychotherapy is actually a courageous step is rarely acknowledged – and certainly not in professional life. The sad consequence: psychotherapy becomes a taboo subject. Many people who are undergoing or have undergone psychological treatment try to keep this fact secret from their social environment. The prejudices associated with the word “psychotherapy” are too great, as is the fear of negative reactions

Shortage of slots

Even before the pandemic, sufferers waited an average of five months for a therapy place. During the pandemic, the need for psychotherapy places has increased further. Although the number of licensed psychotherapists is increasing, only slightly more than half are paid for by the statutory health insurance. This means there is a huge gap between demand and supply. This often leads to long waiting periods, which for some affected people are unbearable and for others are too great a hurdle to even dare to try.

Unaffordability

In contrast to doctors, where there is an agreement between the social insurance institutions and the doctors and therefore the use of a medical service does not cost anything at all, psychotherapy is basically a private service, which is NOT covered by health insurance companies.
Psychotherapy is therefore largely a private service. The fees usually range between 70.- € and 150.- € for a single session of 50 minutes. Deviations from this range of fees are possible and are agreed upon individually with the psychotherapist. However, for many people, especially young people and those with a low socio-economic status, these prices are too high and therapy is simply not affordable. Thus, the groups that are most affected by mental illnesses are the most disadvantaged.

Thus, there are many reasons why people do not seek therapy. Some are afraid of judgment or are insecure because of the stigmata attached to therapy. Others cannot afford therapy or fail to find a therapy slot. In the following blog entries we will discuss which creative, design-based approaches can help these people.

Blind trust is a phenomenon that occurs when we rely on the opinions and actions of others without critically evaluating the information or the source. On Instagram, this can manifest in the form of influencer culture, where users look to popular and highly-followed individuals to guide their choices and behaviors.

Influencers on Instagram often have a large following and are able to reach a large audience with their content. They are often seen as trustworthy and relatable figures, and their posts and recommendations can carry a lot of weight with their followers. However, it’s important to remember that influencers are not immune to manipulation and bias, and that they may have ulterior motives for their actions and recommendations.

For example, influencers may be paid or sponsored to promote certain products or brands, without disclosing that information to their followers. They may also be swayed by their own personal biases or interests, rather than providing an unbiased perspective. This can lead to users blindly trusting influencers and making decisions based on their recommendations, without considering the potential conflicts of interest or lack of objectivity.

From a psychological perspective, influencer culture on Instagram is able to tap into several key factors that make it effective in influencing and manipulating user behavior. One major factor is the concept of social proof, which refers to the idea that we are more likely to conform to the actions and beliefs of those around us. On Instagram, this can manifest in the form of seeing popular influencers endorsing a product or behavior and feeling compelled to do the same.

Another key factor is the concept of self-esteem and self-worth. Many users on Instagram may feel a sense of validation and connection through likes, comments, and followers, which can be influenced by influencers. Influencers can also create a sense of aspiration and FOMO (fear of missing out) by showing off their seemingly perfect lives, which can lead to users feeling like they need to buy certain products or follow certain trends in order to be like them.

Instagram’s design also plays a role in facilitating the work of influencers. The algorithm used by Instagram favors posts with higher engagement, which means that posts from influencers with large followings are more likely to be seen by users. Additionally, Instagram’s design makes it easy for influencers to monetize their following by providing sponsored post options and other forms of brand partnerships. This means that the platform is designed to reward influencers and make their content more visible, which in turn makes it more likely that users will be influenced by them.

All in all it’s important to be critical of the information we see on Instagram and to not blindly trust influencers or any other source of information. It’s always better to do our own research, and to be aware of the potential biases and conflicts of interest that may be present.

For a long time now, the news has been filled with fear-mongering articles about AI taking human jobs. While it’s true that many jobs will be replaced by AI, human-AI partnerships will also create many new jobs, with humans and AI filling in each other’s weaknesses and working towards a balanced future. While we shouldn’t downplay the challenges due to the jobs that will be lost to AI, we should focus rather on finding opportunities to work together and create new jobs in an evolving future.

For designers, AI streamlines our work and completes menial tasks for us, giving us back the time for more creativity. Personally, though, I am not convinced that greater productivity is always a good thing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us found more working hours with the loss of commute times, social breaks at university or the office, or other distractions that we no longer had when working from home. However, it was widely reported and now has been studied that those moments of pause keep us mentally well and also lead to greater creativity, as boredom generates breakthroughs. Of course I am thankful when the AI embedded in Adobe products auto-selects the part of the image I am trying to trace, but I would also be remiss to say that all menial tasks should be removed from design by AI. Repetition can be meditative. I am neither entirely for or against AI in design, as it is much more of a grey area, but I do believe that it is important to carry some caution and reservations as I move forward in my research.

When I chose the topic of AI in Design, I was aware that AI was already all around me in ways both known and unknown, but I didn’t realize how much AI already impacted my work as a designer. Adobe Sensei is the AI and machine learning system implemented in all Adobe creative suite products. Adobe Sensei’s mission statement is to “handle the time-consuming parts of your job, so you have more time to be creative”, nothing that “74% of creatives recently surveyed by Pfeiffer Consulting said they spent more than 50% of their time on non-creative tasks — a huge opportunity for AI to help”.

AI and machine learning features from Adobe Sensei include recommended presets, content-aware fill for photos and videos, subject or object selection, character animator, body tracker, anomaly detection, sky replacement, neural filters, and many more. One feature that I found particularly baffling is the face aware liquify mode in Photoshop, which detects facial features and allows you to manipulate individual parts of the face, widening a smile, raising eyebrows, completing changing a facial expression with an entirely believable result.

Adobe Sensei is also used in Adobe Spark, a program that generates social graphics, webpages, and videos in 20 seconds or less. Once the initial content is created, the user can cycle through different layouts of text, imagery, and other elements, and customize with auto crop and zoom and scale slider to maximize for dynamic graphics. Brands can upload their colours, logos, and assets, and use Adobe Spark to streamline the graphic design process – turning what used to be a 2 day process of creating a social media post optimized for all platforms, into a 2 hour process.

I read up on learning behaviors and came across a lot of theories and myths on how to learn efficiently. I wanted to quickly summarize what I have learned so far to remember everything later.

1. Learning success isn’t greater under pressure, especially time pressure.
   
2. Learning is not like filling a jar in which the acquired knowledge accumulates. Connections between previous knowledge and new knowledge needs to be established to fully comprehend everything.
   
3. Learning cannot be planned. The learning environment (location, breaks, repetition phase, etc.) can be planned and thought through, but there is no guarantee that you will actually learn something.
   
4. There aren’t gifted and ungifted students. By the time children enter school, they have gone through years of socialization and learning, have developed certain interests, which in turn lead to individual and very different potentials. Not all children are lucky enough to receive adequate support from their family to further develop that potential.
   
5. Teachers aren’t among the most impactful influences in learning. Factors created by the teacher, which promote or hinder learning are of greater importance.
   
6. The theory that the ability to learn needs to be learned stems from our output orientated education system.

Some of these things took me by surprise and I’m interested in learning more about them. Especially the idea of the gifted and ungifted student or lack thereof is something I never looked at from that perspective. This is important to keep in mind when thinking about possible gamification of nature solutions.

Sources:

https://www.schulpsychologie.at/fileadmin/user_upload/190304_Lernen_verstehen-Unterricht_gestalten-final.pdf

For my next blog article I was looking into how companies are adressing their offered apprenticeships. This time I am keeping it quite short in presenting you my findings.

Well, there were several ways how companies communicate to young adults and teenagers regarding their offered apprenticeships.

• Representing the company at fairs and events
• Website
• Videos (e.g. YouTube, …)
• Social Media
• Word of Mouth
• Bulletin Board (Schwarzes Brett)
• Flyers/Poster
• Vocational Information Centres (e.g. BIZ, AMS, WKO, … )
• Job platorms (e.g. Karriere.at, … )

For reference, I often chose “Plansee SE” as they are the largest company in my hometown and train the most young people in the region.

Bibliography:

https://www.plansee.com/de/karriere/ausbildung.html

https://www.voestalpine.com/lehre/

https://www.raiffeisen.at/de/meine-bank/karriere/ausbildung-weiterbildung.html

https://www.lehre-im-handel.at

https://www.lehrlingsportal.at

https://www.karriere-mit-lehre.at

https://www.instagram.com/uhlmann.azubis/