AI Activations
IBM needed to do more than talk about Watson, the company needed to demonstrate their AI platform in action. My team set out to design a framework for experiences that would use real services and real-life data. Over the course of the project, we created unique AI powered solutions for business use cases, designed a modular enclosure, and delivered a repeatable pattern for compelling demonstrations.
I was the Design Lead on the Activations, responsible for the conceptual design, physical build, and content development. I coordinated with in-house AI experts, worked with multiple agencies, fabricators, and a talented team of IBM designers. Together, we created a freestanding activation enclosure with real AI software.
Observations
There are a wide variety of trade show display options, but most small footprint kits contain a 10' modular backwall and some sort of storage case. They are typically constructed from aluminum extrusion frames with stretched fabric skin. My team was initially asked to pick a kit, decide on a screen size, and produce the content. Instead, we redefined the problem. What is the most impressive AI experience a user can have in a 10'x10' space?
Forms
We abandoned the notion of a single sided display wall. Those layouts depended on a booth attendant or presenter, but we wanted the software experience to speak for itself. The early concepts were for a kit of reconfigurable parts with integrated touch screens, but our content development outpaced these designs and demanded additional hardware.
Development
It couldn’t just be about the tech, we had to think of ways we could show the tech doing cool shit—then we could tell people how a business was going to save a ton of money. I worked closely with my colleagues and our agency partner during ideation. My focus was making sure we created a real instantiation of Watson services that delivered a compelling experience. I championed applying multiple services for a robust application.
Bitcoin Sentiment and Price Tracker
This experience used Watson to pore through millions of news articles looking for mentions of bitcoin. A second Watson service would then analyze the sentiment of each article as it related to the cryptocurrency. We then correlated this sentiment analysis to the historical price of bitcoin to show how sentiment analysis of news articles correlated with price.
Triple-Checked
A terms of service translator, this experience used Watson to read through lengthy TOS documents to help you understand what data and rights you were giving up by using each service. In this case, the system had been trained ahead of time by feeding it annotated Terms of Service documents from various apps. It would then apply this training to identify similar issues in Terms of Service that it hadn't seen before, calling out terms related to data collection, data usage and licensing, and other privacy-related issues. What made the experience impressive was that we invited users to place their phone's home screen against an integrated optical sensor. We then used visual recognition to identify the apps installed on the device.
Delivery
The custom enclosure housed an array of sensors and double sided touch screens. The unique form made it possible to deploy the experience alone (on a small footprint) or arrayed across a larger space. The tension between machined precision, digital media, and the organic curves was magnetic. Users were drawn to the experience from across the exhibition hall. After the first 7 deployments, the visual recognition service reported over 6,400 successfully identified apps. The housings have since been reused and equipped with additional applications.
