Learn with Leena - Highlights from CES

My first trip to CES in Las Vegas was certainly an exciting experience - so much to look at and learn about. Here are some of my highlights and key trends I spotted.

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

We saw a lot of innovations that can help build a more inclusive world. There was a camera attachment you can clip onto your glasses, which then tells the user what it has seen (eg five steps to the door) and earbuds - lots of them – designed to augment hearing or block out sounds for autistic people.

Orcam MyEye | Norm Glasses | Orcam Hear

3D PRINTING AND INCLUSIVITY

This trend towards inclusive design has been helped by advances in 3D printing. Unlimited tomorrow have created a tailor-made 3D-printed prosthetic arm for kids. By scanning the child’s existing limb, they can create a more effective limb that is a mirror image right down to skin tone and freckles. Working with an AI company, Arrow Electronics, the artificial limbs include an AI computer chip. This offers a kind of ‘muscle memory’, storing up regular movements (like reaching for a glass). When the arm is upgraded to a larger size as they grow, the chip can be moved across too.

Unlimited Tomorrow

CUSTOMISATION AND INNOVATION

There seems to be a shift away from personalisation (choosing from lots of options eg colour or design) towards customisation, where people are able to create their own things. Many future-gazers are predicting the end of the mainstream and the start of endless niches. And this trend can be seen in business too. Innovation is about looking at what your businesses needs and finding ways to use technologies in specific ways to solve a problem.

BIGGER FASTER CHEAPER

Bigger streams, faster networks, cheaper technology. That was a big trend this year. Toyota had definitely embraced BIGGER. They’re creating an entire, full scale city to see how AI and self-driving cars and robots might impact at a large scale. I found it hugely inspiring - designing around people and planet, imagining a positive future. Construction begins in 2021.

Toyota’s smart city

WELLBEING & SLEEP

We saw A LOT of tech around health wellbeing and sleep. There’s an inherent challenge of using devices to help you live better and healthier without really understanding what the root cause of these problems is. A lot of the conversations were around trying to think differently about this problem. After all, it doesn’t make sense to give someone a gadget to solve their stress when the modern world is what is stressing them out.

So the question is: how do we leverage all this for a force for good when so much tech is causing anxiety, isolation, and disconnection? How do we put the human at the centre of all this.

GOOD FOR BUSINESS, GOOD FOR THE PLANET

Our CEO Alan Jope, Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff and Michael Kassan, founder of Medialink, gave a keynote talk about how they are using technology to create better businesses. You can read my Twitter thread with all the highlights here.

EXCHANGE OF VALUES

This brings me to the final trend, which was a recognition that businesses need to focus on an exchange of values rather than an extraction of values. There has to be an equal exchange of benefits between consumers and company (as described in The Myth of Capitalism by Denise Hearn) Because if you focus on the short term gain, you won’t last long. This means thinking more about user experience, making every touchpoint with your company a pleasure not a pain. It also means not treating your users simply as data extraction units for advertisers.

The benefits they get from using your product HAVE to match the benefits you get from them using it. And there was an increased understanding of this among the companies we spent time with. To me it was a positive sign that companies are seeing that their purpose must be about more than making money if they want to continue to thrive in the modern world.

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