As we finish up 2014, it’s time for a few predictions for the upcoming year. In this episode of The Digital Life we discuss the near future of drone delivery, the coming conflict in human / robot labor relations, cyborgs in society, genomic products for mass adoption, and the rise and fall mighty tech lifestyle brands like Apple. You don’t want to miss our final episode of 2014 as we say “so long” to this year and explore five fascinating tech topics.

With the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement and consumer software upending the traditional enterprise environment, it’s no surprise the enterprise user experience is becoming a hot topic for companies looking for increased productivity and a competitive advantage in their respective industries. But the user expectations generated by consumer software, the myriad of devices, and the intricacies of enterprise requirements, create a complex UX problem set that’s not so easy to crack. In this episode of The Digital Life, we explore some of the issues that enterprise UX bring to the fore, consider the future landscape as software “eats the world”, and discuss the skills that UX designers will need to tackle these challenges.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the rise of voice recognition and voice user interfaces. More so than any other interface type, the VUI has the potential to be seamless and “magical”. We’ve all used Siri, and there are plenty of VUI’s for car dashboards, but what’s coming down the road? From a first take on the new Amazon Echo to the future possibilities of voice services, we share our thoughts on the landscape of speech recognition.

In this, the 80th episode of The Digital Life, Dirk Knemeyer interviews Jon Follett on the process of writing and editing “Designing for Emerging Technologies”. The book, published by O’Reilly Media and available on Dec. 4, 2014, explores areas of fast-moving technology in desperate need of user experience design — from the IoT to robotics, 3D printing to wearables, neuroscience to synthetic biology, genomics and more.

To put the book together, a collection of 20 essays from some of the tech industry’s top thinkers, Jon spent 16 months working with design innovators, engineers, and scientists from pioneering companies like Adaptive Path, Autodesk, Essential Design, Fjord, Google, Intel, Involution Studios, MIT Media Lab, Normative and Rethink Robotics.

In this podcast, Dirk and Jon discuss some of the behind-the-scenes thinking and decision making that went into the project.