This week on The Digital Life, we chat about designing for enterprise user experience with UX designer, strategist, author and consultant, Uday Gajander. Uday talks with us about “Wicked Craft”, the current state of enterprise software UX, and how designers can better understand enterprise users.

Resources
Uday Gajendar
Salesforce
GE
Slack
Citrix
CloudPhysics
Dyson

On the podcast this week, we chat about dark UX patterns, those dirty UI tricks that some designers use to get people to do things they never intended to do — like purchase products or services they don’t need.

UX designer Harry Bignull has brought attention to this problem with his curated pattern library at Darkpatterns.org. Scams like the “bait and switch” have been around for hundreds of years, but in the digital world, whether its online or via a voice UI, the potential for deceit at scale is so much greater.

Lots of big brands use dark UX patterns. For instance, most recently LinkedIn was subject to a class action lawsuit, with an award of $13 million in compensation for a deceitful UI workflow that resulted in spam related to “expanding your professional network”.

We discuss the proliferation of dark UX patterns in every kind of digital communication and commerce.

Resources
Darkpatterns.org
After Lawsuit Settlement, LinkedIn’s Dishonest Design Is Now A $13 Million Problem

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the wearables revolution with Scott Sullivan, Experience Designer at Adaptive Path and a co-author of O’Reilly’s “Designing for Emerging Technologies”.

We chat about the current state of wearable tech from fitness tracking to augmented reality to watches, the tools for design and prototyping, and the future of wearables, as humans develop a more intimate relationship with this technology.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Madeleine Price Ball, Co-founder and Principal Investigator of the Public Data Sharing study, about Open Humans, an online platform that enables people to not only connect and participate with research studies but also receive data back from the scientists conducting them.

We explore the origins of the Open Humans project, its revolutionary data sharing model, and how it works for both members and researchers.

Resources
Open Humans
The Personal Genome Project
GET Conference
Runkeeper

This week, on The Digital Life, we chat about the Volkswagen scandal and the increasingly important role that software plays in controlling our physical world.

Last week, Volkswagen, the biggest automaker in the world, got caught cheating on its diesel engine emissions tests. The automaker installed software, a “defeat device” in its cars to make them appear cleaner while they were being tested. As a result, the company faces $18B in fines in the US alone.

While this is probably not the first time software has been used to circumvent regulation, the VW scandal is so high profile that it feels like a game changer. In this, the digital and physical worlds are colliding in ways we haven’t seen before. What is the responsibility for software in the real world? And what is the responsibility of design and user experience?

Resources
Bosch warned Volkswagen about illegal software use
Volkswagen: The scandal explained
Volkswagen scandal…in two minutes