Thread by @RohanIrvine

Designing around the brain — Tea Ugiow

#uxaustralia #UXA2019

Tea runs Google's creative lab in Sydney.

Was a designer in 1999, was part of the first .com boom and bust, joined Google in 2005 and the last 14 years has been at Google.

@teaelleu

When I try and pull apart what I'm going to talk about I find a lot of unstructured processes.

Neural networks can be drawn in a logical easy to understand oath, but it's not how they work in the real world

We've been building tools based on the technology we have available and reflective of it.

We need to start building tools and processes based on how we as humans are.

Tea has been making assorted disasters for 10 years.

They are not successful in the way we think they should be successful.

They are successful in the way of learning something by creating, but it is easy to lose when you are only focussed on a narrow definition is success.

These projects have been about how we interact, use and our relationship with computers.

Sometimes the little things turn into massive things.

And sometimes they're don't.

But they can lead to bigger products.

It is not in my interest to take something beyond a prototype, beyond my space.

Because it often only becomes of interest several years after we do it.

All info for a living is whiteboards that people don't understand.

Then I give them to smart people.

The gulf between Devs and designers is incredibly wide and it's where things break, you lose your design and the essence of the tool you built becomes unweildy or loses its purpose

My family tends to orient towards one way of thinking. What it means is that the child who's not inclined to that type of thinking feels othered.

They start to re-engineer the way they think to fit in, not think differently.

So how do we deal with difference?

I've never been able to operate in a hierarchical leadership. It's usually a white guy, telling to you exactly what to do how to do it like a conductor.

I prefer a gardening approach, you gather the things, water them, tens to them and walk away. Let them grow.

If you have a team of experts you shouldn't be telling them what to do.

You trust your doctor more than you trust your doctor from 20 years ago.

Expertise evolves, it is a continuum.

I don't remember when everything was perfect, but I do remember thinking everything is bad why can't it be like it was before.

You used to able to look at things and they would tell you how reality worked.

Reality is very different based on the information you receive.

What they actual wrote.

What is a trans relationship?
It's not a thing.

Parents try and stop children?
They don't know best.

The UK legislated you were banned from talking about being transgender.

@TheAustralia has a section on gender.

It collects a the same opinion on gender.

And we need to be aware of this stuff as designers.

It's not enough data, it's a very narrow view of the story.

We are increasingly inclined toward normative behaviours because it's easier to scale.

People are happy with being normal, but not super keen on being common.

We all have aspects to us that are atypical.

Nothing is normal.

There are an immense numbers of intersections.

Tea has structural issues with their brain.

Usually when we get caught up on getting a machine to do something it's because your brain does it so well and so effortlessly.

You start to know things you didn't know

As kids interact with the world they're training their data sets.

Audio spatial awareness, object permanence, training tour ears and all the other developmental work we do.

We spend our childhood doing that training.

Tea looked at how we can take the physical structure of the book and how it inhibits the object.

Once you get to the internet there's no real need for it, it's 500 year old tech, we can adapt.

They made different types of books.

A book made with AI, a book made with blockchain, a non linear one, one that creates a spooky story based on your phone's data.

How do you archive a book based on street view that's been updated? How do you continue a story when it doesn't exist anymore?

Tea likes a more literal definition of Augmented reality.

Your ears pick up an incredible amount of information. Even when you're asleep they're working.

The screen is a historical piece of technology. It's just the way that we had to get the content to you. We can see that it won't be the way we do it in the future.

We are working with gesture, sound and how to orient ourselves in space.

Orienting yourself in space is hard.
GPS is out
RFID is not good
WiFi isn't great

But we've found using light is the best option at the moment.

We're watching a video is DISPLAYED which was an artwork of movement and sound created for you to experience as you moved through the space.

When they were doing onboarding for the project engineers spoke about how the work made them feel which was new for Tea.

The normative curve is applied not just in principle innlife. It's how we build our machine learning.

It creates a huge amount of issues.

You get enormous sets of data and that changes.

If the data doesn't exist, you don't exist, and if you need to introduce it, you still aren't significant enough to change the data set and make you exist.

We do this with all our data sets.

You have to think about the consequences and uses of your experiments.

What is good for a 'normal' group can be life threatening for someone defined as not normal.

Take away 1.

Take away 2.
Everything is a structure
Everything is adaptable

Take away 3.
You have an amazing thing between your ears.

Take away 4.
No one is normal.

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