Introduction To Guest

Jared Ficklin is Co-Founder & Chief Creative Technologist at Argodesign, with two decades of experience creating products and visions for major companies. For his previous work integrating technology into the design process at Frog Design, Jared was named one of 4 Frog fellows. He has contributed to the visions, strategy, intellectual property, and products of clients including HP, Microsoft, AT&T, LG, SanDisk, Motorola, CognitiveScale, and Magic Leap.

Jared’s path to design was an interesting one, as he originally thought he was going to be a professional musician. Jared dedicated years of schooling studying music, which led him to confront the harsh reality that he was not going to be a professional musician. Jared later began studying philosophy, psychology, and marketing, which led to an epiphany. When Jared was eight years old, his dad purchased him an Atari 800 and a subscription to a basic magazine intersected with the world of creativity applied to business. This was a lightbulb moment for Jared. His years of computer skills were now very applicable during the boom of the world wide web, and he discovered a design niche that was in the world of tech. It was in this moment where Jared’s new life began. Jared soon landed a job at a shop called Interactive Services Incorporated.

Shortly after Jared moved to Austin, Texas where he picked up a job at a design firm called Frog Design, where he worked for 14 years. Jared describes his time at Frog like having four different careers. It was with Frog where Jared received his education in product design. Jared was then able to join a startup where he had the opportunity to take his design work even further. Jared credits his enthusiasm for technology that found him a ‘home’ in the design world at the right moment, right when his curiosity and pursuit of creativity landed him in a world of designing products.

Shifting World of Experience Design

Jared was right on track with his timing and was working in the perfect space.

Product design forms from a state of emotions. This design movement started in the 60s and still greatly applies to the tech world today. It’s not enough to just have a website. The website needs to have a client experience behind it. The perfect example of a company that demonstrates this is Apple.

From around 2000 to 2020 most products needed to be redesigned and remodeled for web and mobile. Jared also reiterates that machine learning and AI provides enough context to not need as much user interface to understand what the user is attempting to do with a device. This is allowing individual features to show up as single function devices. Also, the costs of parts are coming down, as a wide deployment of single function computers are enabled by machine learning.

On the other side we’re seeing the same technologies enabling new interfaces, voice, for example. The industry is transitioning into the next pattern of computing, which can be far more ubiquitous. Everything will be getting a new embodiment. Jared feels like the next 20 years are going to be just as exciting as the first 20 years.

Design Principles

There are processes and certain design philosophies that help Jared with designing. However, there is a unique space within the design world – when technology is sufficiently new enough and the deployment is unique, but the user lacks familiarity. There becomes this little place on the map that Jared calls the unique place. In that place, it is really hard to do design research or use convention. For example, we can ask people “How would you use AI in the car?” but no one would really have an answer to this question. They’re not familiar enough with what AI is capable of. There’s no patterns or conventions for them to draw from in the past. In western culture, something will usually just get made up. In order to validate what users, want, a prototype must be built and quickly put in front of users. This is what user simulation does. This is how design practices use cognitive skills.

Many times, Jared and his team must understand the problem of the client as deeply as possible and conduct the design research needed. From there, Jared could build things to have them tested out by the users. The orchestration of AI is not a linear process. Much productivity is done through the user experience in design but many times it is presumptive and then rapidly tested. There are no conventional or best practices to draw from. ArgoDesign has to use his own method and technique when designing.

Designing For Responsible AI

Responsible AI is a very hot topic now. This is a consortium that is building essentially what’s like a LEED certification for AI solutions. It’s a series of best practices, but also a consulting way to look at anything from as small as a model to the way the model is used in code. It is then graded for how responsibly it’s being deployed. There have been some big hiccups in the deployment of AI around this issue where either unethical, illegal or immoral behavior has taken place. It’s very important to have transparency. There is a huge motivation to build a layer on top of AI right now that can watch the AI, in turn making sure that it’s hitting business goals, regulatory goals, and ethical human goals.

There is now a reporting interface called poles where business owners can, in a low code environment, build up monitors. Flags and alerts will go off if needed to make sure AI does not get out of hand. This is working well for Argo Design as they design products that both serve humanity and fall in line of high-quality standards.

Advice For Industry Leaders

Jared’s advice for industry leaders is to first understand that we’re still at a system level. Think as a system and not an individual feature. Design can lead you down a primrose path easily because we tend to imagine way far out ahead of what is capable and what will generate value.

You must be aware of system level design and start with the capabilities of an organization. Get a clear understanding of how data is going to thread into their existing workflow processes. From there, the features will start to manifest themselves. You must work with people who can know these things, otherwise, you will get glass type design. Design products that make sense and add value.

Advice For Aspiring AI Designers

Jared feels a career in design is similar to a career as a jazz musician. A jazz musician knows their instruments that they’ve chosen. They do not need to think about the technique when playing, it becomes automatic and practiced. With design, it’s about mastery of a tool set. You will be applying your taste, your talent, your emotional creative expression. However, it’s all synergistic. It’s not just playing what you want. A jazz musician is playing at a club in front of an audience, giving them what they want to hear. There’s a resonance with who’s listening. This all needs to be practiced. As a designer, and as a musician, you must put yourself out there to get the gig. Your design portfolio is everything. Just like there is no better practice for a jazz musician to play than a live show, there is no better practice for a designer than to work with real users on real products. Practice working on a project before going to the customer.

After this practice, both the musician and designer will find a moment where they flip over to the other side, a side where they are able to project the future. They can now understand how to attract and impact the right clients. During this phase, you can showcase the work that you personally would like to produce. However, make sure to make it meaningful. Make sure your work makes a difference, that it holds a certain level of quality. And make sure to connect with the user.

There are three kinds of “smart”. One is you know the right answer. The second is that you can communicate the answer in a way that someone understands the right answer. Third, you can communicate it to someone else in a way that will accept your answer. You must have all three forms of intelligence to truly step into the role of a successful designer.

https://www.argodesign.com/