The importance of language when designing for connected devices

1. Hello stranger
What language will
our connected devices speak?
Clementina Gentile
EuroIA 2016
@clementina_g

2. http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/
What colour do you see?

3. Language influences
our perception
http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/why-red-means-red-in-almost-every-language

4. http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/LanguageWorkingPaper.pdf
Language influences
our behaviour

5. Language is the new UI

6. Argument = war
The importance of metaphors
Your claims are indefensible
He attacked every weak point in my
argument
His criticisms were right on target
I demolished his argument
I’ver never won an argument with him
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Picture: Marina Abramovic

7. IOT metaphors will define how:
we talk about the devices
we talk to the devices
they talk back to us

8. Metaphor of
the talkative butler
(Mimi Haddon, Getty Images)

9. “Amazon Echo is magical.
It’s also turning my kid into
an asshole”
Hunter Walk

10. What if the servants
revolt?
Simone Rebaudengo - Addicted products

11. On what extent
the interaction we have
with the IOT
will mirror or influence
the one we have
with our peers?

12. Metaphor of
the smart assitant
http://news.utexas.edu/2013/10/25/robot-dreamer-more-than-just-a-pretty-face

13. Yahoo developed a BOT that is
able to catch online abuse
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601949/yahoo-has-a-tool-that-can-catch-online-abuse-surprisingly-well/

14. http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/compassionate-ux/
What if the BOT itself
becomes a troll?

15. How will we educate the
machines to go beyond syntax
and grasp also semantics?

16. Will we strenghten or rather
weaken the biases
embedded in our language?
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2016/08/24/language-necessarily-contains-human-biases-and-so-will-machines-trained-on-language-corpora/

17. Metaphor of
the leader

18. https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/sep/09/robot-boss-best-manager-artificial-intelligence
Would you like to work
for a robot?

19. http://smartgovernance.tumblr.com/ http://ethicalmachines.com/
Would you like to
be ruled by a robot?

21. How will the language of
power change?
Can we design ethical smart
systems?

22. How can we design
with language?
Helena Almeida

23. Play with metaphors

24. https://medium.com/intercom-inside/why-conversational-design-is-the-future-2c05f65aa68e#.3k7szbvn8
Prototype conversations

25. “Love words, agonize over sentences,
pay attention to the world.”
Susan Sontag

26. Jung Lee - The end
@clementina_g