Isuru Fernando is the Chief Design and Technology Officer (fmr Head of AI) for IBM New Zealand. He is a recognised thought leader at IBM, is part of IBM's Global Top Talent, and sits on the Worldwide panel for Product Futures. Isuru holds Undergraduate and Postgraduate degrees where he spent his time pushing the boundaries of theory and practice, and co-founded a start-up that went onto a successful acquisition. He is an advisor at a number of universities and academic research groups, and a member of the Embedded Systems and Robotics research group at the University of Auckland. Isuru sits on the Executive Council of the New Zealand AI Forum.
Artificial Intelligence is on the cusp of changing our lives. And in this space, empathetic human focused design is now more important than ever. AI’s new technologies and novel effects are spurring new methods of design and development marking what could be the beginning of the age of relationship design.
Of course, for any of this to have a major impact, we needed to learn a few things about how to design conversations. In this talk, we will break down the key components of conversation design and focus on the challenge of designing a successful conversational interaction that will be natural, usable and supportive of users' needs.
This talk will take Designers on the journey of understanding how to identify AI systems and then will move into focusing on the challenge of designing a successful conversational interaction that will be natural, usable and supportive of users' needs ... all based on real life hands on experiences.
Conversational design is the evolution of a long human-machine communication history, in which every day, we are getting closer to naturally humanised interaction with machines. But we all are still just at the beginning of the journey. There is a lot to learn, to innovate, to accomplish and achieve, and as pioneers in this market, we can all make a difference and leave a mark.
