Sentient design, design thinking vs systems thinking and automation vs augmentation

A weekly round-up—3 discoveries, 1 reflection and a quote worth remembering in the innovation & design space—for leaders invested in digital transformation.

By Maish Nichani

External happenings

Sentient Design: AI and the next chapter of UX

There have been many mediocre attempts to map out how AI shapes UX, and that’s how I approached Josh Clarke’s presentation on Sentient Design. But 10 minutes into his presentation, I was hooked. It is one of the best attempts to make sense of UX and AI and how to proceed with it. Moreover, along with Veronika Kindred, he is writing a Rosenfeld Media book that will be out later this year.

“Sentient Design refers to intelligent interfaces that are aware of context and intent so that they can be radically adaptive to user needs in the moment. Those are the fundamental attributes of Sentient Design experiences: intelligent, aware, adaptive.”

A good example mentioned in the presentation is Google Forms. When the AI detects the type of question that requires a different response, it automatically suggests the correct input type.

In this example, the AI is aware and intervenes only when it realises it can add value. This kind of AI is helpful but falls short of the real potential. For example, why don't we ask the AI: “I am doing a kitchen gadget survey, and I want to gather xxx information, please set up a survey for me.” When the AI gives us output, we can then engage the AI to fine-tune it (and learn along the way). While my idea may seem better in isolation, it is very problematic to implement it in real contexts to be used with real people who have a stubborn tendency to stick with their hard-earned knowledge. I agree with Josh’s recommendation to start with small steps in such circumstances. Josh’s presentation has more context and examples; I highly recommend watching it.

Systems thinking vs Design thinking: What’s the difference?

This informative IDEO article explains the difference between systems thinking and design thinking and the circumstances in which one can be used. It depends on the complexity of the question. Every challenge will require systems thinking, design thinking, and, I argue, futures thinking; the question is under what circumstances. If you are designing an interface for a water cleaning and monitoring product, the focus is on the user experience, so design thinking will work well. If you are designing a business process that cuts across several user segments, then taking a systems thinking approach in addition to a design thinking one will work well. If the business process touches a customer segment whose preferences are changing a lot, then a futures thinking lens into what’s coming up on the horizon might work well. Today, the design discipline is mature enough to offer these three lenses to solve complex, evolving challenges, such as the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals ??

Check out our detailed guide on systems design.

Digital transformation: Automation or augmentation?

Lovely insights from Dan French on using AI in digital transformation, especially in business processes: automate repetitive, monotonous tasks but augment tasks that require intuition and complex judgement. Dan gives the example of identifying cancer cells from blood samples. While the AI identified 92.5% correctly, expert pathologists identified 96.6% of cases, and when the pathologists used the AI, they identified 99.5% of the cases together. Amen. In the article, Dan also points out the laws of business process design:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. So, our first responsibility is to define the efficient operation, the “end-to-end process,” and the desirable, discrete “journeys”.

Check out our detailed article on business process automation.

Internal reflections

We attended SuperAI, the premier AI event in Asia, held in Singapore from June 5 to 6, 2024. I asked my team if the event was useful, and to my surprise, they all said that it was one of the most educational and informational events they had attended. They’ve attended other AI events that they jettisoned early. SuperAI was pitched nicely for our team - it was not too basic or advanced. And they had a wide variety of offerings at the right level.

On a personal note, I wish we had the same platform 7 years ago when we pitched Ola Search, our AI search application for the enterprise that offered intent-based search. We indexed Wikipedia and extracted entities that we could use to enrich the search queries. For example, when you asked, “What is the GDP of Cambodia and compare it to that of Vietnam?” we scoured Wikipedia to enrich our queries. Then we searched for data to build the countries' GDP for 5 years, plotted the data on a graph, and showed the results in a few seconds. We got many standing ovations but no funding to pursue the idea. Lesson learned: Keep testing if you are at the right time and place for your ideas to take shape. The good news is that all the knowledge we learned (and earned) is helpful in this new wave of AI ??

Quote worth remembering

“Never lose the childlike wonder. Show gratitude. Don't complain; just work harder. Never give up.”

— Randy Pausch, who became famous for his Last Lecture delivered during his struggle with cancer, on never giving up.