Technology will become like air: how data informs enterprise strategy and new user experiences
An interview with Sophie Kleber, Executive Creative Director of Global Product and Innovation at Huge
Sophie Kleber is the executive creative director of global product and innovation at Huge, where she oversees product and innovation with a focus on data. She came to Huge ten years ago as a user experience designer, when the agency had just 50 employees. Now, Huge is one of the top digital agencies in the world, providing strategy, marketing, design, and technology services to Fortune 100 companies while employing over 1,500 people. Kleber’s role is to “problem-solve with the user in mind” by using design and UX, and by identifying core areas of digital transformation for clients.
How has Huge taken on digital business transformation strategy in addition to experience design?
We’ve developed a massive technology arm. Oftentimes, we are a catalyst for companies that want to transform. It's not the digital laggards who come to Huge and say, "Just make me another website." It's the organizations that are in the midst of thinking about digital transformation. Our programs accelerate because we have a strong culture of making, and we know the only thing that matters is what is out there in front of people. What can we use? What can be tested? What can be learned?
We treat any touch point with consumers as a product. With that comes the test-and-learn loop that every company now has to do. That is our approach to everything. We create these beacons in companies around an agile learning process. Naturally, we had to build up business strategy and business transformation expertise in-house as well. We have a business strategy team and a digital transformation team. Companies come in and start with a small program and then see the success. It creates a continued relationship with the agency. Companies are not coming to agencies anymore to do all of their digital properties, and then let you hand it off while they snooze for two years until the next wave of innovation.
From your design-focused perspective, how is technology changing the way you work on solutions with your clients?
When humankind started developing digital technologies, we thought about technology as a way to make our lives easier. But we are limited by what the technologies we built can actually do. In a way, we’ve become the servant to our technologies; we’re glued to static screens. I think with this new wave, particularly around virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, we're actually going back to the idea that technology can move further in the background. We can live the lives that we want.
The new ways users are interacting with machines require companies to reconsider how they’re reaching consumers. For consumer-facing problems, we work with companies to determine whether or not a new technology is actually a good match for the problem they're trying to solve. And, in terms of internal structuring, remember when companies had separate teams for digital areas like web, social, and mobile? Consumers don't think that way anymore, so neither should companies. Consumers want to interact with the company, and their needs and expectations are more fluid.
Our big efforts relate to helping companies restructure to understand how to get that 360-degree view of their customer and their needs. It's an effort on the data side, on the operational side, and on the transparency side within the company. We help companies see that each expression with a customer is a continuation of the conversation that they’re having across all the channels.
NYC Media Lab shares your perspective that technology is moving further in the background, and that media experiences are becoming more and more “environmental” as they are activated by new controls, voice, gesture, and other inputs. What are some predictions you have around more “environmental” technologies?
Technology will become like air. It's everywhere. You breathe it in, you breathe it out. It's around you, and it's this connective tissue between the world and yourself.
Technology shouldn't be right in front of our noses. We call it invisible tech, or ubiquitous tech—the idea that everything is connected, but you don't have to worry about it. The idea of voice being able to communicate with technology, is really just the switch of being able to communicate on our own terms.
What about the intersection of technology and emotional intelligence?
Brands need to understand that, with conversational interfaces, they are building the strongest representation of their brand’s personality to date. Amazon first thought Echo was a hardware play. They didn't realize until later that it was a software play. Think about what Amazon was before—a cold marketplace—and what it is now, with a personal tool like Echo in the ecosystem.
We have a research series at Huge called Curie, where we explore areas of interest around new technologies. In February, we went to New Jersey to talk with ordinary people who have a Google Home or an Amazon Echo. We learned that the moment machines talk, people assume relationships. It's how we're wired. We have to start thinking about the emotional connections now, because the room for abuse is massive in terms of manipulation, and in terms of using deeper emotional connections for the interest of a company versus the interests of the people.
Designers need to consider the types of emotional relationships consumers want from their machines. In New Jersey, the responses varied. There was one man who wanted his device to be his therapist, to have the ability to talk to it after a long day. Other people said: "I absolutely don't want that at all. I need human connection."
How can we prepare for the future of emotionally intelligent machines?
Machines are not humans, but they are humanoid, replicating human interactions and emotions. It is unhealthy for us to create things that act as humans but that we think we can treat as machines. How we approach machines matters, especially as they are tracking and collecting our personal data. Personal data has economic value; with that comes a certain visibility that holds real-world consequences. If we treat our machines unethically, it could come back to hurt our reputation.
We've become socially conscious of the idea that we are being watched, but we often don't know how. It creates an anxiety in users. The result is often social cooling, the phenomenon that we cool down our social interactions to a generic kind of positive, peachy social etiquette. It makes the collected data itself inaccurate.
There’s still this idea that data has no conscience; that data just draws conclusions that it sees in patterns. We need to build systems that ensure that the data collected is a more honest reflection of the consumer and their range of emotions. To do this, we need to improve how we interact with and behave around machines. We need to become more natural around them.
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