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Apple launches a Machine Learning blog

In Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Technology by Fredy Ore

Apple has today launched a new Machine Learning blog with a first post on Synthetic Images a method to speed up accuracy and training time. It is all about creating a reference trail and history into how the algorithm interprets and learns from training data.


References

1. I. J. Goodfellow, J. Pouget-Abadie, M. Mirza, B. Xu, D. Warde-Farley, S. Ozair, A. Courville, and Y. Bengio, Generative Adversarial Nets. Proceedings Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, 2014.two thousand fourteen

2. X. Zhang, Y. Sugano, M. Fritz, and A. Bulling, Appearance-based Gaze Estimation in the Wild. Proceedings Computer Vision Pattern Recognition Conference, 2015.two thousand fifteen

3. E. Wood, T. Baltrušaitis, L.-P. Morency, P. Robinson, and A. Bulling, Learning an Appearance-based Gaze Estimator from One Million Synthesised Images. Proceedings ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications, 2016.two thousand sixteen

4. P. Isola, J.-Y. Zhu, T. Zhou, and A. A. Efros, Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks. ArXiv, 2016.two thousand sixteen

5. J.-Y. Zhu, T. Park, P. Isola, and A. A. Efros, Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks. ArXiv, 2017.two thousand seventeen

6. M.-Y. Liu, T. Breuel, and J. Kautz, Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation Networks. ArXiv, 2017.two thousand seventeen

7. P. Costa, A. Galdran, M. I. Meyer, M. D. Abràmoff, M. Niemeijer, A. M.Mendonça, and A. Campilho, Towards Adversarial Retinal Image Synthesis. ArXiv, 2017.two thousand seventeen

8. M. Sela, E. Richardson, and R. Kimmel, Unrestricted Facial Geometry Reconstruction Using Image-to-Image Translation. ArXiv, 2017.two thousand seventeen

9. D. Lee, S.Yun, S. Choi, H. Yoo, M.-H. Yang, and S. Oh, Unsupervised Holistic Image Generation from Key Local Patches. ArXiv, 2017.two thousand seventeen

10. A. Shrivastava, T. Pfister, O. Tuzel, J. Susskind, W. Wang, R. Webb, Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training. CVPR, 2017.

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Bag Snatchers, Monzo & a night of adventure in London

In Digital Experiences, Journey, Love by Fredy Ore

A wonderful story of Tristan Watson’s adventure searching for his bag in London.

Not just any bag, it contained his Macbook, iPad Pro, Go Pro 5, Canon 100D, 1TB HD full of recorded talks and his personal stuff a moleskin notebook, passport, house keys and a few bank cards (Amex, Halifax MasterCard, Monzo).

The story is about how he ended up getting everything back including a bottle of Jack Daniels.

It’s 19.30 on Thursday evening and I’ve just arrived at the Rack & Tenter pub near Moorgate station. We’re in London running the Ignite Accelerator offsite, and we’ve just finished a full on two days of workshops and mentoring with a group of really interesting companies. The whole Ignite team is in the pub, plus a few of our alumni, and we’re all on a high from the last couple of days.

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Human-Centered Machine Learning

In Artificial Intelligence, Best Practice, Design, Experience Design by Fredy Ore

Josh Lovejoy and Jess Holbrook have published a great article titled Human-Centered Machine Learning which looks at steps to stay focused on the user when designing with ML.

Some of the challenges I’m learning about and very much are discussed in the article include dealing with false positives and false negatives, algorithm labelling and co-learning and adaptation.

These points aim to help designers navigate the new terrain of designing ML-driven products. by putting the user first, iterating quickly and understanding the unique opportunities machine learning can create.

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2017 Motion Awards – Adobe Live Rebrand film

In Design, Film, Image, Video by Fredy Ore

There is just something special about this Adobe Live Rebrand film by oddfellows.

Client: Adobe
Creative Direction: Michael Chaize,
Production: Leigh Cooper

Directed by: oddfellows

Creative Direction: Chris Kelly
Art Direction: Yuki Yamada, Jay Quercia
Animation Direction: Josh Parker
Production: Erica Kelly, TJ Kearney
Design: Yuki Yamada, Sarah Beth Hulver, Jay Quercia, Manddy Wyckens & Dana Kalnick
2d Animation: Josh Parker, Tyler Morgan, Handel Eugene, Kavan Magsoodi,
Khylin Woodrow, Stan Cameron, Alec Cummings
3d Animation: Chris Guyot, Chris Kelly,

Music and Sound: CypherAudio

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Tube & Berger Essential Mix debut

In Love, Music by Fredy Ore

Been loving this debut mix by Deep House & Indie German duo Tube & Berger this past week.

Recorded on BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix with Pete Tong on the 18th February 2017.

More on Tube & Berger can be found on their official website, Soundcloud, YouTube, BeatPort and RA.

Their 2014 Entourage EP in on Discogs

Below is the official video of Ruckus feat. Richard Judge

The original mix of Imprint Of Pleasure, a heart-wrenchingly poignant best-selling anthem released on Suara

And an interview on the making of their 2012 debut studio album Introlution

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John Maeda’s 2017 Design in Tech Report

In Design, Digital, Disciplines, Experience Design by Fredy Ore

Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results.

John Maeda’s 2017 Design in Tech Report puts the focus on Inclusive Design.

Update: The Design in Tech Report is available for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, the 2019, the CX Report in 2020, and the 2023 Design in Tech Report: Design and Artificial Intelligence. Due to the 2020 global pandemic cancellation of SXSW an addendum as been created for the CX Report 2020 looking at Remote vs Distributed Work. Well worth a read.

Making inclusive design profitable hinges on the principle that if you want to reach a larger market, you have to reach people you are not already reaching by being inclusive. This new frontier of design requires some technical understanding outside of pure classical design. The hybrid designer/developer, often referred to as a “unicorn” in the tech industry, is often relied upon to bridge that gap.

In 2015 the first report identified the rise in design value, as mobile devices and the mass consumerization of computing moved from “tech-led” to “experience-led” digital products as services. Smartphones took over and this inadvertedly gave access to nearly everyone.

The following year, the report highlighted the growth by consultancies and companies with acquisition of design agencies as means to speed up the demand of Design across the industry.

This years 2017 report frames computational design as a key driver of accelerated growth and focuses on inclusive cultures as vital for tech businesses hoping to lead in design.

The 3 main types of design are identified below:

By recognizing exclusion we can start to build empathy for people who interact with unwelcoming designs every day of their lives.Kat Holmes (Principal Design Director, Microsoft Inclusive Design)
Taken from Design.blog

It’s important to note the differences to the Classical Design definition:

Design Thinking

Computational Design

Inclusive Design Resources:

This year’s report also highlighted our industry’s pioneers in computational design including Gillian Crampton Smith, Red Burns, Joy Mountford and Muriel Cooper.

You can watch, listen and read the full report on the Design in Tech Report website.

Additional References:

Update: John Maeda has published an addendum to the CX Report 2020 which looks at Remote vs Distributed Work. Well worth a read.
The 2020 Customer Experience Report Addendum on Remote vs Distributed Working

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Jude Kelly at TED on how we Interpret non-fictional Stories

In Future, Journey, Remember by Fredy Ore

Jude Kelly points out in this TED talk, that skew and ultimately bias affects how we interpret even non-fictional stories.

She highlights that there is a more useful, a more inclusive way to look at the world, and calls on everyone (both women and men) to paint, draw, write, film and imagine a gender-equal society.

#BeBoldForChange

Happy #InternationalWomensDay everyone.

Image source: Forbes and IWD

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Svalbard’s Global Seed Vault – the most important film you’ll watch

In Film, Future by Fredy Ore

If there is one important film you need to watch this year to get over the Oscars #EnvelopeGate it is this one – the Crop Trust’s Svalbard’s Global Seed Vault.

I watched this film with my son. You should too.

Sorry Moonlight.

Since 1903, over 93% of fruit and vegetable varieties in the U.S. have gone extinct. With a changing climate, the only way agriculture can adapt and continue to feed the world is with crop diversity. The Global Seed Vault’s mission is to ensure agriculture remains resilient to environmental changes.

seedvault1

Among the most important buildings in the world, the Seed Vault holds the key to human survival: more than 880,000 seed samples, the largest collection in the world. These seeds are critical because, unless safeguarded, agriculture biodiversity is at risk of decline in the face of changing environmental and population pressures.

Donate Now.
Logo-horizontal-RVB

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Started reading Hippo & The Best Interface is No Interface

In Books, Design, Disruption, Experience Design by Fredy Ore

If there are 2 books that come recommended in a time when we are all talking about Machine Learning, AI and Conversational Bots, it is these two, which I’ve just recently started reading. I can’t wait to get through them :)

The Best Interface is No Interface

by Golden Krishna
Our love affair with the digital interface is out of control. In this hilarious book, Golden Krishna challenges us to better understand our connection with screen-based interfaces with 3 principles that lead to more meaningful innovation.

Below is an audio sample of Chapter 2:

and

Hippo – the Human Focused Digital Book

by Pete Trainor
hippo-book

Below is a quote from the book:

When you step back and assess the way we design things, you realise that we don’t create, we discover. Mostly we discover what is already there, by aligning ourselves to a position so that creations emerge. Aligning in order to bring things into material form – to bring them into manifestation. This is a book about re-aligning design thinking to the thing that joins us all together – Humanity.

When conversation hurts or hinders the Chatbot experience

In Digital Experiences, Disruption, Experience Design by Fredy Ore

Designers who are new to conversational interfaces often have the misconception that chatbots must chat. At the same time, they underestimate the extraordinary writing skill, technical investment and continual iteration required to implement an excellent Conversational User Experience.

Mariya Yao has written a helpful article titled, Does Conversation Hurt Or Help The Chatbot UX? which looks at appropriate applications for using chatbots and when not to use them.

It’s important to identify these points:

  • When you should add conversation to delight
  • How best to handle edge cases and conditions
  • When not to use conversational chatbots
  • The impact and affects on the user experience and brand

Mitsuku, one of the world’s most popular chatbots… has twice won the Loebner Prize, an artificial intelligence award given to the “most human-like chatbot”.

The popular chatbot has conversed with more than 5 million users and processed over 150 million total interactions. 80% of Mitsuku’s users come back for more chats.

mitsuku

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What’s new in D3.js v4

In Design, Visualization by Fredy Ore

Irene Ros (@iros), the Director of Data Visualization at Bocoup has written a very helpful presentation and summary of the changes of D3.js version 4.

Some of the changes are include namespacing, canvas rendering, selection, transitions, text formatting, default locale, brushing amongst others.

whats-new-in-d3-v4

Ben Foxal has also written a helpful blog post on the changes required for converting visualisations in version 3 to version 4.

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Prince: 1958-2016

In Film, History, Image, Love by Fredy Ore

The Guardian
Prince: memories of U
Cultural commentators and artists who grew up with Prince’s music explain what he meant to them and what made him unique.