SXSW PanelPicker 2015

Designing Your Future with the Connected Car

Presenters: frogs Diny Huang, Cobie Everdell, Michael Robertson, and Remy Labeque

Vehicles continue to grow smarter and more connected. From cars that interact with our homes and cities to driverless cars that chauffeur us wherever we want to go, the next ten years will see a fundamental shift in the way we engage with our cars and the role they play in our lives. Magazines and concept videos are beginning to show what this connected future might look like. But as drivers, passengers, and pedestrians, what does the connected car mean for the way we live? What role will the connected car have in the way that we do our work and care for our families? How will it change the great American road trip? Join frog as we take a user-centered design approach to explore the future of the connected car. In a two-and-a-half-hour workshop, we will discuss the changing relationship we have with cars now, explore the technological changes we might see in the near future, and sketch out a range of concepts and future experiences that the connected car will enable.

Mobile Money: Designing for Financial Inclusion

Presenters: frogs Brandon Edwards, Lilian Tse, Gigi Gormley, Venetia Tay

When it comes to branchless banking (“mobile money”) in emerging markets, a core question continues to tug at those in the financial inclusion space: “Why hasn’t mobile banking taken off as mobile phone penetration rates reach up past 90% in the developing world?” “Providing financial services to the 2.5 billion people who are ‘unbanked’ could boost economic growth and opportunity for the world’s poor,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. The answer to this central question is not the technology. The answer is in understanding the mental models people have around money and the quality of the mobile banking user experience. Join members of frog with deep expertise in financial inclusion in emerging markets as they share lessons learned in the field. This panel will cover what human-centered design looks like in emerging markets, highlighting themes seen across rural and urban research, as well as stark differences in how people conceive of and manage their money.

Wearable Drones: High-flying Fashion

Presenter: frog Adam Pruden

People around the world continue to use drones in fun and novel ways. Soon, drones will be part of our everyday lives and one of the biggest platforms for innovation. With this in mind, we can begin to imagine how drones will interact with us at a very intimate scale by exploring the concept of wearable drones – that is, drones that land and launch from our bodies. Unlike our stationary smart devices that only support us digitally, drones expand the limitations of the human body and support us by performing physical tasks on our behalf. To accelerate our acceptance of these high-flying fashion drones, we at frog explore innovative forms, functions, and behaviors to design the appropriate experiences between drones and people. Join this presentation for a look at future drones that seamlessly integrate into our lives without getting in the way, create delight instead of fear, and take on personalities that feel more like your friend, coach, or personal assistant.

The Future of The Data-Driven Workplace

Presenter: frogs Aaron Moulton and Ahmed Riaz

Technology gives us the ability to unlock data in a variety of contexts. It started with the social graph, the shopping graph, and the location graph. Unlocking data in the workplace is next. Both people and companies have value systems and goals to accomplish in the workplace. Understanding the alignment between personal and organizational goals is something that we are on the verge of developing because of the transparency and power provided by big data. This core conversation will explore the upcoming new workplace experience and the various places where personal data and enterprise data can be overlaid. We will cover the next wave of opportunities for enterprise infrastructure to capture this data and unlock the knowledge hidden in this workplace data by identifying patterns. Additionally, we will look at the opportunities for app developers and technologists to be on the front lines of this fertile frontier.

Services for Products: When Products Are People

Presenters: frogs Simone Rebaudengo and Azure Yang

As daily objects rapidly enter the next phase of technological evolution and become “smart,” they will be increasingly designed to adapt, learn our habits, and make good decisions for us. And until now, designers have focused on designing interfaces for people to better communicate with objects. However, the desire for smart objects to be self-driven often results in a user not fully understanding what an object is doing or why – the complexity of the object’s decision-making is hidden behind slick UIs. What if we design interfaces to help people better understand an object’s needs and aspirations? How would this change the way we design? This dual presentation will outline through existing products and research experiments the upcoming role of products as subject of our design process. We’ll present the importance of designing through the lenses of a product to unlock engaging and sometimes awkward experiences.

The Age of Augmented Humanity

Presenter: frog Antonio De Pasquale

Technology has helped humanity improve our skills and extend our potential. As technology continues to evolve, so has a new path for human enhancement. We are now hacking our bodies. Google Glass and other forms of wearable technologies are just the first generation of consumer products that extend the self, while the development of systems like powered exoskeletons and bionic limbs and eyes are re-defining the future of medicine and human ability. This talk will explore this future of wearable devices through the lens of User Experience design. As UX designers, how can we approach these new technologies that will require a wider cross-channel strategy for long-term interactions? Connecting the dots of a complex multi-touchpoint experience will require understanding of the new design paradigms of a wearable-first user experience. How can we use design to orchestrate this new level of integration between humans and technology in order to create the best experiences?

Measuring Madness: UX Design for Mental Health

Presenter: frog Jennifer Dunnam

Wearable technology and quantified-self applications have provided us with a multitude of tools for understanding behaviors and improving lifestyles. While designers continuously strive to humanize the experience of engaging with technology, the spectrum of human emotion is vast. Within the realm of mental health, there has been little improvement in the tools provided to patients suffering from brain disorders. Affective computing, artificial intelligence, and biometric sensors have the potential to radically change the way people are diagnosed and treated for conditions stemming from mental illness. This talk will examine the world of sensors and software currently available to assess the nuanced signals of human emotion. Using a journey map of mental illness, I’ll outline opportunities for technology to help patients track their physical and emotional activity, communicate their experiences with doctors and family, and build a strategy for long-term management of their conditions.

“BYOC” With A Pocket Full Of WebSockets

Presenter: frog Robert Tuttle

The mobile device you have in your pocket, bag, or hand right now has a web browser capable of using HTML5 WebSockets today which can enable high-performance bi-directional communication for real-time multi-user experiences. Every modern smartphone and tablet can then be turned into an ad-hoc personal controller for rich interactivity with the local environment and other devices with nothing more than a local data connection and URL delivering cross-platform markup and code on the fly and an app store nowhere in sight. In this session the presentation space will be transformed into a massive multi-player game room and immersive data visualization tool using only a pop-up private Wi-Fi network and your own mobile devices. Live and in-depth JavaScript code walkthroughs, functional demos, and best practices for using WebSockets in scenarios demanding high performance and scalability will be covered in parallel with the interactive fun for all where BYOD becomes BYOC.