McDonald’s AI blooper, CX’s downgrade and including the planet as a user
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A weekly round-up—3 discoveries, 1 reflection and a quote worth remembering in the innovation & design space—for leaders invested in digital transformation.
External happenings
AI bloopers: McDonald’s automated order-taking system
“McDonald's is ending its AI drive-thru trial after customers reported errors in their orders - including bacon being added to ice cream.”
If AI = reliability issues, then surely
AI x voice input x noisy environment = more reliability issues
Even the IBM partnership did not help figure this out, so the initiative was retired after a series of order-taking blunders.
What can we learn from this? Getting AI to work in the lab differs from getting it to work in the real world. The faster we get real-world feedback, the better. Also, don’t try to replace the entire system simultaneously; make it live with the existing system until the kinks are worked out. The need for cost-savings with an automated system must have weighed heavily on this project. Remember: order-taking is already a well-oiled process, so having an AI system to work alongside an existing process should reduce risks.
Customer Experience quality in the US falls to an all-time low
Wow. Customer Experience (CX) is at the lowest level since Forrester started tracking this benchmark in 2016. The answer lies in another Forrester report at the end of 2022 that said, “Forrester predicts elimination of 20% of CX programs in 2023”.
In a high-interest rate environment, the relentless expectation to report growth forced CX teams to show how they were helping to move the needle. They couldn't.
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Now, you can’t ignore the customer (the results can be even more disastrous), and you can’t continue doing things that don't impact business. The solution seems to be to increase rigour and accountability in CX. These days, with the promise of GenAI making things more personalised and automated for the customer, it will be sad if the CX teams don't get the budget to try these out.
Is the planet the missing member of your project team?
Here’s an idea: If we include the planet as a stakeholder, will this help us focus on creating environmentally friendly solutions? Chris How from Clearleft thinks so. He lays out an interesting thought experiment of including the planet in:
I like the idea and think it is about time such thinking turns into a groundswell movement. It is all about demand and supply. For the longest time, the demand was not there. Why would project sponsors increase the budget for an environmental effort when nobody cared about it (good, caring companies are in the minority)? But now we see the demand changing: customers are choosing environmentally friendly solutions. With this change, the supply side now has to up its game. The time for design x sustainability has come.
Internal reflections
The team met in person at the office this Monday for the weekly huddle. The day's topic was the role of designers in an increasingly complicated world.
The early cavemen were designers; they made paintings of essential events to act as a memory aid. All they needed was a vivid imagination and sharp rocks. Today, creating something valuable requires an extensive list - user needs, data requirements, system requirements, business requirements, big boss requirements, social and environmental requirements… you get the point. But this complexity makes us designers valuable in today’s context. Instead of taking all the information all at once, we excel at asking the right questions, focusing on the important stuff and then shaping an idea that creates positive change.
The problem is that sometimes we forget to realise our superpowers. Donald Norman said it best in this beautiful discussion with Felix Lee of ADPList (watch from this timeline). He said, as designers, we must excel at being generalists, taking everything in. I showed the team the video snipped and urged them not to forget what it means to be designers and not give up on making a positive difference in the world.
Quote worth remembering
“Turning something from an idea into a reality can make it seem smaller. It changes from unearthly to earthly. The imagination has no limits. The physical world does. The work exists in both.”
― Rick Rubin in The Creative Act: A Way of Being, on the constant dance designers must decide what to bring to the earthly world.