Anna Pickard
A short talk about things you already know
We used to have lower expectations. Things that worked were good enough. Once “working” was a given, companies started to notice what people seemed to gravitate toward things that worked *well*. Next came a rapid ascent through “worked well and looked good”, “worked well and felt good”, taking a brief evolutionary diversion into “worked well and had autoplaying audio” that ended up thankfully short-lived. And then there was some more history of the internet. It was fascinating.
Point is, given the fact that everything mostly works, works well enough, and looks great, we’re all trying find different ways to stand out, and to differentiate the apps and services and companies we build. And as we get more and more used to speaking to our technology in a human voice, we’re getting more particular about wanting to hear one reply — whether out loud, or on screen. Personality. Voice. A human touch. The way to achieve these things is not by copying the personality of the app next door, it’s by reaching inside your own experience, and that of your company, and utilising all the skills and habits and hobbies and training you thought you’d left behind in order to do this technology stuff.
This is a talk about examining in a new light how we can take the sum of our experiences up to this point and use them to create for ourselves a way of interacting with humans, as humans, through the apps and services and companies we’re creating. Like the trained web professionals we all are*.
*Spoiler: We’re not. But the fact that we’re not makes us better at being the things we are.