In many respects, 2017 was an incredible year for design. Brands such as Nike took a powerful stance on inclusion. Virtual reality enabled exciting new experiences. Inventors solved some of the longstanding problems mainstream design has ignored, like better breast pumps for nursing mothers. However, there were plenty of blunders, frustrations, and annoyances, too. Simply put, these 10 design trends need to die.
Has the moment of reckoning finally come for opaque algorithms? Algorithms are the silent puppeteers of our lives, deciding how we vote, what we read, how we dress, what we watch, how we’re policed, and more. We don’t know how these algorithms work. What’s even more troublesome is that the companies that are designing and using these algorithms often don’t either. One of Facebook’s algorithms, for example, created anti-Semitic categories for users, which violated the site’s standards. This needs to end–and help is on the way.
This year, the ACLU launched a new initiative to fight biased AI Ideo recently purchased a data science company to figure out ways to insert human-centeredness into algorithmic design. As my colleague Cliff Kuang wrote in the New York Times Magazine and on Co.Design, a new field of explainable artificial intelligence is emerging to help the problem as well. This is called X.A.I.–as artificial intelligence learns, it teaches humans what it’s doing and how it’s making decisions.