Big red buttons, ethical AI, the robots are coming

Howdy! Welcome to this week’s Whiteboard Roundup.

It’s been a while. I’ve had a few pretty busy weeks of visiting Disneyland Paris, motorbiking through France, and trotting down to London to visit clients and doing fun things like the Crystal Maze.

But don’t worry - I’ve been keeping tabs on what’s going on in product design, and here’s some interesting stuff for you to read. Enjoy!

Cheers.

Tom HaczewskiDirector, The User Story

News

Making buttons clickable

Pushing buttons is one of our favourite things to do in real life. A big red button is irresistible, especially when we’re told not to push it.

So when we want people to push virtual buttons, what’s the best way to do it?

This neat little article goes through the basics of good button design and how to make them entice even the most nonchalant of users.

Push it.

A blueprint for ethical AI

We’re at a difficult inflexion point in the Evolution of AI systems, where everybody is racing to create the next big leap. the problem is that in this, like in most scientific endeavours, the question is about how quickly we can go not necessarily about whether we should go there or not.

Ethical quandaries are coming up regularly and companies are not necessarily behaving as ethically responsible as they should be. we need good guidelines and frameworks for producing AI systems that behave in a way that we morally would expect them to.

This article discusses a really interesting blueprint for creating ethical AI systems that actually put human needs at the forefront of their development. It's not perfect and there's lots more to go, but I think this is a really interesting step and it keeps it very simple as well.

Take a look.

Humanoid robotics are evolving far quicker than expected

If you haven't seen the equal parts, impressive and frankly, terrifying demonstration of the new robot Figure 01, you should definitely have a look at this link. The technology involved is incredible and combines machine learning movements and autonomy with our most up-to-date understanding of learned language modelling.

This feels like the opening scene of a post-apocalyptic, robot uprising movie.

Be frightened and inspired here.

What we’re up to.

🚑 The STD* Clinic28 March, 4pmWe’re back again for some new website teardowns - want to get your site looked at? Join us here and put your URL in the chat, and we’ll have a look.*Suboptimal Tech DesignSign up here

Check out our previous videosIf you missed my last videos, you can see them all here. Have a look. They’re fun!Replays

Thanks for reading.

Don’t worry, summer is just around the corner.

As you’re here to the end, here’s my thought for the week to leave you on:

See you next time, friends!

Brought to you by Tom Haczewski, director of The User Story. We’re a product strategy, research and UX agency based in Norwich, working with SaaS teams and startups.