Disruptive technologies call for rethinking product design. We must question assumptions about underlying infrastructure and mental models while acknowledging neither change overnight. For example, self-driving cars don’t need steering wheels. Users direct AI-driven vehicles by giving them a destination address. Keyboards and microphones are better controls for this use case than steering wheels and pedals. But people expect cars to have steering wheels and pedals. Without them, they feel a loss of control – especially if they don’t fully trust the new technology. It’s not just control. The entire experience can – and perhaps must — change as a result. In a self-driving car, passengers needn’t all face forward. Freed from road duties, they can focus on work or leisure during the drive. As a result, designers can rethink the cabin experience from scratch. Such changes don’t happen overnight. People are used to having agency. They expect to actively sit behind the wheel with everyone facing forward. It’ll take time for people to cede control and relax. Moreover, current infrastructure is designed around these assumptions. For example, road signs point toward oncoming traffic because that’s where drivers can see them. Roads transited by robots don’t need signals at all. But it’s going to be a while before roads are used exclusively by AI-driven vehicles. Human drivers will share roads with them for some time, and humans need signs. The presence of robots might even call for new signaling. It’s a liminal situation that a) doesn’t yet accommodate the full potential of the new reality while b) trying to accommodate previous ways of being. The result is awkward “neither fish nor fowl” experiments. My favorite example is a late 19th Century product called Horsey Horseless. Patent diagram of Horsey Horseless (1899) via Wikimedia Yes, it’s a vehicle with a wooden horse head grafted on front. When I first saw this abomination (in a presentation by my friend Andrew Hinton,) I assumed it meant to appeal to early adopters who couldn’t let go of the idea of driving behind a horse. But there was a deeper logic here. At the time, cars shared roads with horse-drawn vehicles. Horsey Horseless was meant to keep motorcars from freaking out the horses. Whether it worked or not doesn’t matter. The important thing to note is people were grappling with the implications of the new technology on the product typology given the existing context. We’re in that situation now. Horsey Horseless is a metaphor for an approach to product evolution after the introduction of a disruptive new technology. To wit, designers seek to align the new technology with existing infrastructure and mental models by “grafting a horse.” Consider how many current products are “adding AI” by including a button that opens a chatbox alongside familiar UI. Here’s Gmail: Gmail’s Gemini AI panel. In this case, the email client UI is a sort of horse’s head that lets us use the new technology without disrupting our workflows. It’s a temporary hack. New products will appear that rethink use cases from the new technology’s unique capabilities. Why have a chat panel on an email client when AI can obviate the need for email altogether? Today, email is assumed infrastructure. Other products expect users to have an email address and a client app to access it. That might not always stand. Eventually, such awkward compromises will go away. But it takes time. We’re entering that liminal period now. It’s exciting – even if it produces weird chimeras for a while.

Nikki Anderson interviewed me for her User Research Strategist podcast. Our focus was AI’s impact on research and informaton architecture – and how practitioners can take advantage of this new technology. See the episode page, which includes show notes. If you want to learn more about my experiments in AI, check out this page.

In episode 2 of the Traction Heroes podcast, Harry shared an extreme personal experience in service to exploring the question: How can we act skillfully in unfamiliar circumstances? I considered adding a trigger warning – Harry’s story made me wince. That said, we landed in a practical place. I’m excited about Traction Heroes. These conversations are more personal than those in my previous show, while providing lots of value. IMO of course – I’d love to hear your thoughts. Traction Heroes ep. 2: Unprecedented

I’m undertaking a year-long crash course in the humanities. These are my notes for week 4. Following Ted Gioia’s curriculum, this week I read the Analects of Confucius. As I did last week, ChatGPT helped me select a movie to complement this reading – albeit indirectly. Readings I’d heard of Confucius and occasionally seen some of his sayings, but hadn’t read the Analects. It wasn’t easy. The text consists of pithy statements attributed to Confucius or his disciples. It’s fragmentary and non-linear. I suspect much nuance is lost in translation. (I used the Penguin edition translated and commented by Annping Chin.) It was produced in and for a different context. (Chin’s notes helped.) That said, themes emerged. Confucius values “humaneness”: a way of being and doing good. As with Socrates, what this might mean is illustrated through examples and interactions with others (primarily, disciples.) The humane person aspires to do good for others – often at their own expense. The individual’s relationship to social structures is perhaps the book’s central concern: Master You [Youzi] said, “It is rare for a person who is filial to his parents and respectful to his elders to be inclined to transgress against his superiors. And it has never happened that a person who is not inclined to transgress against his superiors is inclined to create chaos. A gentleman looks after the roots. With the roots firmly established, a moral way will grow. Is it not true then that being filial to one’s parents and being respectful to one’s elders are the roots of one’s humanity [ren]? Individuals should cultivate wisdom and knowledge. The following statement might well be a raison d’etre for this crash course: The Master said, “I suppose there are those who try to innovate without having acquired knowledge first. I am not one of those. I use my ears well and widely, and I choose what is good and follow it. I use my eyes well and widely and I retain what I observe. This is the next-best kind of knowledge.” Audiovisual Music: Gioia recommended The Hugo Masters, an anthology of Classical Chinese music. Apple Music has volume one, which focuses on bowed instruments. I was surprised by the similarities between this music and that of the old American west. (Perhaps it’s recency bias from Ry Cooder’s PARIS: TEXAS soundtrack.) Art: Gioia recommended a website that highlights ancient Chinese arts and crafts. I’m sorry to say I gave this only minimal attention. My first “fail” in the crash course. Cinema: as I did last week, I asked ChatGPT for movies I could pair with this week’s reading. Specifically, I asked for movies that reflected Confucian values. It gave me the following list: “Ikiru” (1952) - Akira Kurosawa “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) - Robert Mulligan “The Family” (1915) - Fei Mu “Tokyo Story” (1953) - Yasujirō Ozu “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) - Frank Capra “Rashomon” (1950) - Akira Kurosawa “The Joy Luck Club” (1993) - Wayne Wang “The Godfather” (1972) - Francis Ford Coppola I gravitated towards (3) because it seemed a) older and b) directed by a Chinese director. Alas, THE FAMILY is a hallucination. While Fei Mu is indeed an important Chinese director, he didn’t direct this film – indeed, he was nine in 1915. Sigh. But I hadn’t heard of Mu before, and this mention led me to discover another film of his, SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN. It’s available in its entirety (with English subtitles) in YouTube: As with many older films, it moves glacially. It also felt more staged than contemporary Western films. (Compare its cinematography with CITIZEN KANE, which is seven years older.) That said, it does reflect Confucian values, at least as I understood them. Two short lectures by Prof. Christopher Rea help contextualize the film and explain its significance: YouTube is a source of endless treasures for someone driven to self-education. Reflections Confucius’s approach is what we might call “conservative”: social and filial responsibilities overrule individual desires. Rather than rethinking old ways of being, we’re encouraged to play our assigned roles without complaint.Being good means fulfilling established duties toward family and community. (“With the roots firmly established, a moral way will grow.”) In the movie, Yuwen sacrifices her love for Zhichen because of her commitment as Liyan‘a wife. In a modern Western context, this feels quaint. For us, “lived experience” trumps older “received” knowledge, especially when dealing with social relations. We wince at the notion of having “superiors.” Confucius would say we’ve lost sight of the roots. Or worse, we see them but believe they’re rotten and must be hacked out. But our individual selves don’t amount to much; it’s the broader context that matters. Our duty is keeping the context healthy and moving forward. Self-effacement is especially important in times of tumultuous change. The movie is set after the end of the Sino-Japanese war and during the Chinese revolution. The ruins we see onscreen are the result of one way of life giving way to another. Mu seems to say the way forward lies in looking to traditional structures – a radical statement in a time of revolution. While not experiencing outright war, many of us are living through tumultuous change. Technology (especially AI) is upturning long-standing ways of being. Politics is in turmoil, as are global and local economies. What’s the best way of living under such conditions? Confucius would encourage us to return to our roots and value the context above ourselves. It’s a worldview that calls for trust, humility, and self-sacrifice. A tall ask in our individualistic times.