Bob Royce
The need to let operational concerns drive technology is especially true with the emerging field of (AI). But you might never know this by talking with many data science teams…
Many people start web projects by talking to web developers (the HTML coders), and put them in charge of leading the project. For small projects, this can work. But for larger projects, that’s a risky approach.
Leaders today are challenged by the rapidly increasing complexity of their world. Many grasp the power of AI to transform how value is created and delivered, but also see the risks of another new technology and feel a weight of responsibility to their mission, the people they serve and their overworked teams.
Why it matters: AI is transformational, and trying to keep up with its growing capabilities will make your head spin. But the relentless hype is a distraction. You don’t need to be a technology expert to lead your team through this transformation successfully. Instead, you need to anchor your strategy in the human wisdom that already drives your organization.
There has been a lot of attention paid to the ethical application of AI technologies in society, and rightly so. Machines can only judge based on the way they’ve been trained, and there are too many examples where this has been done poorly to ignore. Guidelines, even regulatory laws, are an immediate necessity, and every company harnessing AI must vigilantly plan to protect against abusive applications of this powerful technology.
Early in my career, a housemate told me about his adventures teaching a robot arm to build a tower of blocks using an AI framework for developing systems that exhibit intelligent behavior. Define a block. Define a tower of blocks. Find the block. Pick the block up. Place the block. Place another block, and so on to make a tower. Oh wait, the arm doesn't know about gravity so it tries to start at the top and work downward. Teach the arm about gravity. Oh, that is a glass table top, so learn to start there instead of crashing through to start on the ground. And so on.
User experience and business must work together: UX firms need to show how experience is a performance measure on price/performance continuum.
Artificial intelligence can be a benefit to your business, but only if you are asking the right questions before you start.
Websites are places made of information, and architecting information is harder to do than it seems on the surface. How do information architects do it?
As an educator, executive, and consultant for the past 25 years, Bob Royce has enjoyed solving business problems by leveraging information technology. A bit of a geek who reads for fun, he loves the intersection of the visual, verbal, and computational worlds. Although he started his career as an educator and graphic designer, he eventually moved into business and management roles and now finds pleasure in the combination of them all.
Prior to co-founding TUG, Bob was managing director of RFD Insight, a business consultancy providing interim cross-functional teams. Previous roles also include VP of Business Development at DNA Software and Senior Director at AppNet/Commerce One, where he led a team of solutions architects delivering eBusiness solutions to a range of corporate clients.
If a site tries to meet everyone’s goals equally, it will be mediocre and confusing. If you want a good site that holds together over time, use a performance continuum to address these tensions and agree on how to balance the conflicting demands.