#uxt

I love this Walther Regin UXT rifle’s power, lightweight and sturdy construction, but I wish I’d gotten the optic as well. This is what I’ll have to do next time!

It comes with a bipod which I like. Would have it regulated, but it’s really ok that it isn’t. This rifle is accurate, powerful and easy to handle.

You’ll find that the Predator series has a lot to offer with its high-quality optics, features, and value.

This is a great little gun that shoots well and it has a good weight to it. It also has good range and accuracy.

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https://searchinghero.com/blog/best-walther-reign-uxt/

In your personal opinion, what would be the coolest / most interesting use case for artificial intelligence in the near future?

One of interesting trends during the pandemic was the usage of online tools for education. Young people who had to stay at home had to study using systems such as Microsoft Teams, Edomodo and many more ( UNESCO provides a whole list of different distance learning solutions ). My 11 year old sister for instance had to use Edmodo every day, to chat with her teachers, have homework tasks organised and for my mother to keep a track of her progress. For my sister it was of course not ideal as she would rather spend her time with friends in a classroom than in front of a desktop, my mother on the other hand was really intrigued because she could easily contact the teachers and check if my sister is on track with her education. However, according to many news sites, during the pandemic many children despite having access to such platforms had more mental problems, and to make matters worse children from lower income families in some cases didn’t have access to education at all.

All in all I see a big potential for using AI for education, we cannot say it was the best way to study but it did make education more accessible and customisable for many. The customisation part for me is the most interesting, take for instance children with ADHD who get easily bored but can also superfocus on things that interest them. Using AI to create a educational system where all children achieve their learning goals but using different means would be a great thing. Children with ADHD for instance can have learning material made in a form of videos, interactive games and excercises. Still learning the same things but using different mediums. This for me would be perfect equity in education and I hope many educational platforms that relay on AI will incorporate it.

In addition to recruitment discrimination mentioned in the article, search online for another example in which AI biases can cause problems. Explain the cause and effect of the bias in the case you found.

AI biases are created by people who make the system. They can learn by themselves and gather a lot of data to analyse but foundationally they still use the instructions given to them by humans, who are inherently biased. As said in the article by Brookings “Systemic racism and discrimination are already embedded in our educational systems”. For instance using AI teachers can predict the grades and progress of their students, for minorities this is bad news since they are already underrepresented and biased against in offline world. This makes them less likely to get into very good univerisities and puts a lot of pressure on them to “prove” that they are just as the majority. One way to ractify it is for developers to use ethics frameworks while creating a new tool. This way they can address biases that might arise once the tool is on the market. Based on comprehensive studies by Lee and Kizilcec (2020) algorithms that are modified for such bias do improve several indicators of fairness..

Sources Used:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/09/21/the-4-top-artificial-intelligence-trends-for-2021/?sh=2819fcb71c2a

https://deepsense.ai/ai-trends-2019/

https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2020/07/06/ai-in-education-what-the-future-holds/33811/

https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/17/pandemics-dire-global-impact-education

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55863841

https://edarxiv.org/pbmvz/download?format=pdf

What if we had to shift paradigm and design within “energy budgets” – a given maximum of energy consumption for the services we design?

In my view the so called ‘energy budgets’ are already happening. In her speech Mel Hogan talks about a hurricane that ravaged Heuston in 2017. Thousands of people were left without energy and few miles down the road servers for big corporations were using energy as on any other day. Personally, I see how the sustainability card had been played by corporations since the inception of the term sometime in early 2000s. It is a hip word, one that makes customers feel like the company they buy from is doing more than just sell their products. The reality however is different, customers pay for these products, they pay for corporations to store/maintain 93% of unused data (Hogan,2020) and they pay for all those ‘innovative ideas’ that never actually took off.

This brings me to the conversation about how in the future will we design services with such a ‘energy budget’. Service design process “is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users” (Wikipedia,2021).

Since the corporations seem to gain more rights into public infrastructure and use soon scarce resources to achieve their corporate goals, where do the ordinary users fit it? In the book “ Homo Deus”, Harari explains how through the last century our society changes from Humanists- people who belive the human experience is the most valuable to Dataism- the information is the most valuable. As mentioned before, there are already examples when this becomes the case. Where servers storing information will receive resources needed to sustain itself rather than humans with their not as valuable experiences.

Since service processes take into account the planning and arranging people to improve interaction between the corporation and the user, who will be the person deciding what is more valuable and what an improvement actually means? I believe this person to be a UX designer in the future. Our job as UX’ers is to understand our users, business needs and find a way for them both to live happily with their needs fulfilled. It is already not so easy to balance both and I believe in the future UX’ers will have even harder job.

Imagine, there is no energy in your building for a whole week, you can’t make a warm tea nor take a shower- but don’t worry all your past Tweets and photos are safely stored on servers that have energy. Will you as a user be happy with this arrangement and see it as a good interaction between you and The Corporation? Personally, I would be enraged because I believe I’m more valuable than some information. The corporation on the other hand finds your information to be more valuable than you as a person. What should UX designer to do then? Focus on your needs as a user in a human centric way or since The Corporation pays your bills you should care about their needs more?

As a future UX’er one will need to dive deeper into subjects that are currently not covered in a general UX course. Subjects such as philosophy, sociology and sustainable development will need to be thought to at least some extent. UX designer will need to learn about ethics and morality of designing, the consequences of their designs on a society in a context of business, climate and especially ethics. Our natural resources are scarce and UX designers will need to take that into account too, it won’t be a job just for engineers and farmers anymore. As a UX designer I never stopped to consider corelation between finite resources, providing useful products and happy customers. Once I start looking from this perspective, I see that my job will become much more challenging but also exciting. No more pixel pusher but a digital reform maker.

So my question to you is this: Do you think as a UX designers we should take these finite resources into account when designing and why?

Sources used:

Homo Deus- Book by Yuval Noah Harari

https://youtu.be/mMnBTSaRcEk - Mel Hogan talk

Once upon a time there was a full time stay at home mom called- Janice. Janice lived in Amsterdam with her partner and worked remotely as a product designer. She recently had a baby and tried to juggle both her career and motherhood. Mia, her 3 months old baby was a nice joufyl child but often struggled with colic and sleepless nights. Janice and her partner suffered from lack of sleep and often forgot to get groceries or even take a shower- what a joy to be a parent !

They recently won Lotto and decided to invest the money in their home and make it smart. Their decision to do so is that they want to make their life easier and get some help with their day to day life by means of technology.

They found a company that specializes in smart homes and smart technology. This company is based in US but has contractors all over the world, they are also the biggest in the world and offer a lot of choice.

Janice and her partner full of excitement meet with one of the smart home designers at the office and talk over all the things they would like to have in their house. As a designer Janice cares that the technology is not too intrusive, she heard many stories about how fridges got hacked and governments listen to its citizens. Her partner though could not care less, he says “ we have nothing to hide, so why should we worry”. After a long discussion they decide to go with it and make a list of things they would like to have. They really liked the idea of central command, where all of the smart features around the house have centralised spot. They also liked that as they walk through the house the lights follow them as to save energy. For Mia they found a wall displays that depending on her heart beat the walls display different visuals with music, so she can get a good night of sleep. Janice and her partner also enjoyed this idea as they can feel like having dinner in Paris and breakfast in Barcelona.

Few months into living in their dream smart house they received news that the company is going bankrupt and the government will take it over. Janice again started to worry about their personal data that the company was storing, her partner again said “ nothing to worry, its not like we have anything to hide from the government”.

Few years have passed, Mia turned 5 and Janice was feeling better than ever about her smart home. She was getting her night of sleep, hot coffee right after shower and listened to the sounds of Thames river while having breakfast. Everything was perfect…until the knock on the door. Janice opened it and saw two government agents who informed her that her partner had been charged with internet fraud. Apparently for the last three years her partner was busy with “pump and dump” schemes and the government had a lot of information to back this up.

Janice couldn’t believe it !

During the court proceedings it was revealed that since their smart home data was stored on government servers the agents were able to use it to find out his movements, how the whole scheme operated and even when he lied (remember the heartbeat detection feature?). He got 10 years in jail.

The only things Janice said before they took her partner away to prison was “ I told you so!”.

Carrie has been living alone for a while. She and her friend Todd have always wanted to move in together. It made a lot of sense, as they have been inseparable for as long as Carrie can remember.

In fact, whenever she uses her iLenses to access her early life memories, Todd is always there. They often sync up the lenses to watch movies or play video games together. 

So when the day finally came, they were both very excited. They helped each other carry in their boxes and started to arrange the furniture. Carrie pushed the sofa to the corner, because that is how she had visualized it when she looked at the 3D floor plan with her iLenses, but Todd suggested having it by the window for better lighting. The two friends were having so much fun moving in, they had not noticed that it had already turned dark. Carrie accessed the home settings through her iLenses and turned on the lights above her in the living room. “It’s been a long day” she says “I am going to freshen up with a shower and then head to bed”. She started making her way to the bathroom and as she walked, the light bulbs would lighten her path and turn off as soon as she passed by.

The iLenses adjusted the water temperature in the shower according to her body temperature, so the water felt just right to her skin. As she is showering, she receives a call from her grandmother, but she pushes it away from her sight by moving her eyes to the side, similar to swiping. She thinks to herself “Grandma probably is just calling to ask how to make the Lenses work, for the millionth time. She’ll figure it out.” As she pushed the call away, her eyes focused on the towel rack. She forgot to take a towel with her. She turns off the shower and shouts for Todd to bring her a towel, but there is silence in the air. 

She gets out of the bathroom and makes her way to her room. The lights in the corridor strangely do not light up her way, and she has to do it manually. She never had to do this before, so she has no idea where the switch is or even how to work it. She tries calling grandma to ask about it, but the iLenses cannot get the call through. She screams out for Todd, but still hears no reply. The darkness in the house makes sleep get the best of her.

The next morning, she wakes up to a big red alert in her sight. “Reconnecting” says the large red letters. She looks around and the letters are over every electronic equipment in the house. The light bulbs, the shower, the toaster, the door lock...nothing seems to be working. No sight of Todd yet. Until...a video of a live news broadcast appears in her vision: “Network error causes major terror in the country, millions panic”. It is then she realizes. She’s still living alone. Todd was never real, but a figment of her imagination, projected by the iLenses.

Question: Will we get to a point in which humans depend so much on technology that we won’t know or will forget how to do simple tasks, or even lose track of reality?

I personally have been on a never ending war with one particular service/product. Although I do see how it being contacless can be a lot more hygienic (specially during trying covid times), it just never seems to function when I want to. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: A complaint on sensored toilet flushes.

I personally have been on a never ending war with one particular service/product. Although I do see how it being contacless can be a lot more hygienic (specially during trying covid times), it just never seems to function when I want to. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: A complaint on sensored toilet flushes. 

I love Dyson products, they are smart, useful and designed well. I loved our first Dyson hoover ( yes I loved a product) because for the first time I could see how much our dogs were shedding. This little change in the design made hoovering so much more satisfying not to mention more sustainable.

Cleaning out the Dyson vacuum

Right before the pandemic hit I went to a cinema in Pathe Arnhem, it’s a new cinema -everything build new, modern and very smart. After the movie and a lot of soft drinks we needed to use their toilets and as a well thought adult washing hands was no brainer- or so I thought.

I can really appreciate a new innovative product and as previously mentioned Dyson stands for me as a very innovative brand that creates useful products that are easy to use. Well let me tell you about washing my hands experience. Usually when one washes their hand you squirt a bit of soap out of a dispenser, the dispenser usually use a button or a sensor. Then one proceeds to use a tap and again it can either use a button or a sensor for this, afterwards in the same fashion one can dry their hands.

Pathe x Dyson

In this newly built Pathe the toilets are fitted with a handle soap box ( one needs to physically push it to use it ) and the new “ breaking the mold for hand dryers” – Dyson Airblade Tap which is all based on sensors. Already I can see two different worlds, the old fashion press me and something happens vs new gesture initiated sensor. I was quite exited ( yes about a tap) because it did look interesting however my first thought was- how am I to use it? There were no signifiers telling me what I should do , on a contrary the design was sleek and minimalistic. Once I tried to place my soapy hands under this invention – the dryer turned on and the soap went all over me and a person beside me! How can this be ? I just placed my hands under the tap like a usually would but something unexpected happened, something that was not supposed to happen.

Best example of how airblade worked for me:

How Airblade is supposed to work

Apperently the new 2 in 1 Dyson tap lets the user place their hands under the tap and using a sensors it turns on either the water facet or the dryer depending on your hands placement. This is a very natural gesture to me, I’m used to placing my hands under the tap with or without pressing a button but what I don’t expect is that I need to place my hands in a certain way else this “out of the box” idea becomes a pretty bad experience.

After some research I found I was not the only one who experienced it, there are videos of people using this product in different spaces, sinks and with two or one hands. Some turned out to be very smooth experiences but some are just bad. My opinion on this product is similar to that of Don Norman in his article about Gestural Interactions. There were no menus, no buttons no visible signifiers telling me what I’m supposed to do. It’s not about remembering nor exploring how to use it- since my need as a user is to wash my hands quickly and go. As Don Nomarn explained: “The requisite feedback is lacking. Moreover, a pure gestural system makes it difficult to discover the set of possibilities and the precise dynamics of execution. “ Thus, I don’t believe this product feels very natural to use, it is very innovative, however it still needs some work on how to prevent errors, give timely feedback and clearly explain through it’s design how it should be operated.

My question:

Is being innovative outweighs a need for natural interaction?

Sources used:

https://newatlas.com/dyson-airblade-line/26100/ https://medium.com/@elizabeth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw_N71HFxlk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cny80_Zkg5M

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRgf_7kDhkY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link