Brand Guidelines

AI can hallucinate and its behavior cannot be predicted most of the time. We can't anticipate what the user will be presented with as we can in a traditional interaction system where we design the interactions and the messaging step by step conventional user experiences are controllable. We understand and decide what happens next.

With AI, we have to accommodate surprises and equally important, communicate the risk for upfront setting the right expectations about performance, indicating whether the product learns over time, clarifying that mistakes will happen and that user input will teach the product to perform better and so on. Don't omit this transparent initial communication as AI systems operate with uncertainty, and if your users expect deterministic

behavior from a probabilistic system, their experience will be degraded. Another major problem is trust and transparency. People have a hard time trusting objects that feel magic. We can't trust what we can't understand. AI systems are not transparent to us for multiple reasons. For once, most of us lack the technical knowledge to actually understand what goes on under the hood. Second, and more importantly, many times with generative AI,

we have no idea where the information is coming from. Tools like GPT and Bard have the power of constructing answers that feel legitimate and sound very pertinent, but can be entirely made up and inaccurate. AI doesn't tell us how they've constructed an answer which would help. And maybe as designers, we should push for this transparency in generative AI, exposing a high level thinking process that gives us the information sources

and general reasoning that's behind an answer. Another reason that adds to the mistrust is how AI is communicated in the media. A Google algorithm that classifies people of color as gorillas, a Microsoft chatbot that decides to become a white supremacist in less than a day, a Tesla car operating in autopilot mode that resulted in a fatal accident. We've seen these isolated but terrible experiences. Sometimes the AI systems are described as black boxes,

so maybe the solution is opening them up. Companies such as Google, Airbnb and Twitter already released transparency reports about government requests and surveillance disclosures. A similar practice for AI Systems could help people have a better understanding of how algorithmic decisions are made. The last problem I want to mention is ownership and intellectual property. This, for me is a fascinating, a very important debate.

I want to start by saying that with so much AI generated art, what we'll all witness is a significant shift in what we value as a society. And to illustrate this argument, I want to give the example of Mona Lisa. Borrowing this from Mark Rolston. If you think about it, AI could basically recreate a one on one replica of Mona Lisa without any identifiable differences. Could actually make it better, more symmetrical, more technically impressive, and so on.

But it won't be Mona Lisa. If we know and in the future, AI art will probably be labeled as per regulations that are not yet in place but are needed. Adobe is already adding those labels. More will follow If we know that it has been generated by AI and we look at it, we probably won't feel too much. But if we're in front of Mona Lisa at the Louvre, we know this was made by da Vinci 500 years ago.

We can see the fascination of the people around us, their excitement. We ourselves can experiment our own version of interpreting and looking at it. We're humbled by being in front of this work of art that has been worshiped by humanity for hundreds of years. It has the potential of being an almost religious, fundamentally human and very touching experience, which is very unlikely to be experienced towards AI art. We will value what is human made.

We will know that something was created from a person's experience, suffering, imagination, hope, scarcity is not what will make art valuable. Its creator is. And then there's another layer to this debate. If AI creates art based on everything it knows from the work of other artists is that such a different expression of creativity from that of a person who has been in art school, studied Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian.

And then their style is influenced by the art history and the works they studied. Something to think about. I'm not saying theft is acceptable, which takes us back to the need for a more transparent, cited, source exposing system for generative AI. But I want to give a different angle on how art is built.

Now, just to start off by saying responsive is a default. Responsive is not an option – *do it*. And the reason is because that's where the world is at. Everyone expects things to be mobile-optimized, and responsive just means that if I switch from my laptop to my tablet to my phone, the site's going to fit to that resolution; it's going to kind of follow me.

And we know that users do that; that's the default. So, by doing responsive design, you're supporting device switching, and that's why it's important. You're also potentially making things a little bit more accessible and SEO-friendly, which is a factor for Google's algorithm that prioritizes responsive sites.

This new narrative starts with *identifying your audience and intent*. The way you pitch an idea to a client, peer or executive requires an *adjustment to your language and approach*. Client – they're more of an occasional traveler. They don't know the system; they don't know the ins and outs. They're less likely to share your language.  I mean, you're probably speaking design. They speak business and outcomes and results. So, you may need to establish a basic level of understanding.

Clients and executives are also less patient  and don't want to waste 20 minutes going through every single detail just to get to the answer. Karen's what you would call an occasional traveler. She expected high-fidelity visual comps and just had a bottom-liner approach. Karen's one of these busy executives. She doesn't have time for – nor does she need to or want to hear – all the details. She just needs to know *why she should care*, *why it matters to her line of business*,

and then she can decide to support your proposal ...or not. Now, the last time the team had presented to Karen, they spent the *entire 60-minute meeting* walking  her through *their process* and *justifying their decisions*. If you know anything about executives – a 60-minute meeting; *not* a good idea. Here's the rub. They never addressed the value of the business, and the team didn't come in with a clear ask.

In the own words of the team, it was the most grueling 60 minutes of their entire careers at this company. So, what do we do? Well, this time around, we started with audience and intent. We changed the story and wrote a new  narrative and developed a new plan. We started with the *intended outcome* with Karen, shared a few *stories* and then highlighted the *value* that our approach would bring to her business – and quickly gained approval from her. And I'll never forget the moment; it was like eight minutes into my presentation.

I actually looked down at my watch to check, when Karen interrupted me mid-sentence and said, 'Okay, Todd – I get it. You've done your homework; you've clearly shown how the solution solves the problem and how it's better than my original idea. What do we need to do to move forward?  What do you need from *me* to deliver this?'

I've been talking to a lot of people in agencies, startups, even from the GAFAs, to Google, to Apple, et cetera. And I realized that we share the same frustrations – from people who don't get design. They may sound familiar. We'll see. The first one is, 'Can you make it *pretty*?'; 'Can you do the 'UX' (whatever it is)?'; and, 'Can you add this *wow* effect?'

And if you're like me – so, this is me – when you hear that, you would cringe. And I've heard them a lot. Because what we really want to hear is... 'Can you make it *usable*?'; 'Can *we* do the UX *together*?'; And the last one: 'Can you *tell me what's broken*?'

Accessibility ensures that digital products, websites, applications, services and other interactive interfaces are designed and developed to be easy to use and understand by people with disabilities. 1.85 billion folks around the world who live with a disability or might live with more than one and are navigating the world through assistive technology or other augmentations to kind of assist with that with your interactions with the world around you. Meaning folks who live with disability, but also their caretakers,

their loved ones, their friends. All of this relates to the purchasing power of this community. Disability isn't a stagnant thing. We all have our life cycle. As you age, things change, your eyesight adjusts. All of these relate to disability. Designing accessibility is also designing for your future self. People with disabilities want beautiful designs as well. They want a slick interface. They want it to be smooth and an enjoyable experience. And so if you feel like

your design has gotten worse after you've included accessibility, it's time to start actually iterating and think, How do I actually make this an enjoyable interface to interact with while also making sure it's sets expectations and it actually gives people the amount of information they need. And in a way that they can digest it just as everyone else wants to digest that information for screen reader users a lot of it boils down to making sure you're always labeling

your interactive elements, whether it be buttons, links, slider components. Just making sure that you're giving enough information that people know how to interact with your website, with your design, with whatever that interaction looks like. Also, dark mode is something that came out of this community. So if you're someone who leverages that quite frequently. Font is a huge kind of aspect to think about in your design. A thin font that meets color contrast

can still be a really poor readability experience because of that pixelation aspect or because of how your eye actually perceives the text. What are some tangible things you can start doing to help this user group? Create inclusive and user-friendly experiences for all individuals.

As you're designing, it's so easy just to design for the people that you know and for the culture that you know.  However, cultures differ. Now, that's true of many aspects of the interface; no[t] least, though, the visual layout of an interface and the the visual elements. Some aspects are quite easy just to realize like language, others much, much more subtle.

You might have come across, there's two... well, actually there's three terms because some of these are almost the same thing, but two terms are particularly distinguished. One is localization and globalization. And you hear them used almost interchangeably and probably also with slight differences because different authors and people will use them slightly differently. So one thing is localization or internationalization. Although the latter probably only used in that sense. So localization is about taking an interface and making it appropriate

for a particular place. So you might change the interface style slightly. You certainly might change the language for it; whereas global – being globalized – is about saying, "Can I make something that works for everybody everywhere?" The latter sounds almost bound to fail and often does. But obviously, if you're trying to create something that's used across the whole global market, you have to try and do that. And typically you're doing a bit of each in each space.

You're both trying to design as many elements as possible so that they are globally relevant. They mean the same everywhere, or at least are understood everywhere. And some elements where you do localization, you will try and change them to make them more specific for the place. There's usually elements of both. But remembering that distinction, you need to think about both of those. The most obvious thing to think about here is just changing language. I mean, that's a fairly obvious thing and there's lots of tools to make that easy.

So if you have... whether it's menu names or labels, you might find this at the design stage or in the implementation technique, there's ways of creating effectively look-up tables that says this menu item instead of being just a name in the implementation, effectively has an idea or a way of representing it. And that can be looked up so that your menus change, your text changes and everything. Now that sounds like, "Yay, that's it!"

So what it is, is that it's not the end of the story, even for text. That's not the end of the story. Visit Finland sometime. If you've never visited Finland, it's a wonderful place to go. The signs are typically in Finnish and in Swedish. Both languages are used. I think almost equal amounts of people using both languages, their first language, and most will know both. But because of this, if you look at those lines, they're in two languages.

The Finnish line is usually about twice as large as the Swedish piece of text. Because Finnish uses a lot of double letters to represent quite subtle differences in sound. Vowels get lengthened by doubling them. Consonants get separated. So I'll probably pronounce this wrong. But R-I-T-T-A, is not "Rita" which would be R-I-T-A . But "Reet-ta". Actually, I overemphasized that, but "Reetta". There's a bit of a stop.

And I said I won't be doing it right. Talk to a Finnish person, they will help put you right on this. But because of this, the text is twice as long. But of course, suddenly the text isn't going to fit in. So it's going to overlap with icons. It's going to scroll when it shouldn't scroll. So even something like the size of the field becomes something that can change. And then, of course, there's things like left-to-right order. Finnish and Swedish both are left-to-right languages. But if you were going to have, switch something say to an Arabic script from a European script,

then you would end up with things going the other way round. So it's more than just changing the names. You have to think much more deeply than that. But again, it's more than the language. There are all sorts of cultural assumptions that we build into things. The majority of interfaces are built... actually the majority are built not even in just one part of the world, but in one country, you know the dominance... I'm not sure what percentage,

but a vast proportion will be built, not just in the USA, but in the West Coast of the USA. Certainly there is a European/US/American centeredness to the way in which things are designed. It's so easy to design things caught in those cultures without realizing that there are other ways of seeing the world. That changes the assumptions, the sort of values that are built into an interaction.

The meanings of symbols, so ticks and crosses, mostly will get understood and I do continue to use them. However, certainly in the UK, but even not universally across Europe. But in the UK, a tick is a positive symbol, means "this is good". A cross is a "blah, that's bad". However, there are lots of parts of the world where both mean the same. They're both a check. And in fact, weirdly, if I vote in the UK,

I put a cross, not against the candidate I don't want but against the candidate I do want. So even in the UK a cross can mean the same as a tick. You know – and colors, I said I do redundantly code often my crosses with red and my ticks with green because red in my culture is negative; I mean, it's not negative; I like red (inaudible) – but it has that sense of being a red mark is a bad mark.

There are many cultures where red is the positive color. And actually it is a positive color in other ways in Western culture. But particularly that idea of the red cross that you get on your schoolwork; this is not the same everywhere. So, you really have to have quite a subtle understanding of these things. Now, the thing is, you probably won't. And so, this is where if you are taking something into a different culture, you almost certainly will need somebody who quite richly understands that culture.

So you design things so that they are possible for somebody to come in and do those adjustments because you probably may well not be in the position to be able to do that yourself.