-> *A snapshot of this page was published in July 2019 here: [Let’s talk about Relationship Design | by Dirk Songuer | Medium](https://dirksonguer.medium.com/lets-talk-about-relationship-design-95a4f7e1ebeb) -> *In 2016 I gave a talk about trends and the future of technology and marketing and I predicted: *"Relationship Design will be the next big thing in digital design"*. It was the first time I used the term to describe the concept of crafting and orchestrating digital aspects of our lives into meaningful and personalized experiences. ## Observation While [[Virtual Reality]], [[Augmented Reality]], the [[Internet of Things]], [[Cognitive Services]] (and their poster children: [[Conversational Interfaces]]) as well as [[Digital Assistants]] have their own powerful applications and visions, I believe that they share the same end state. All these trends are about bringing purely digital things (behaviors, beings, entities, capabilities) into the real world in a tangible and very relatable way. It's about enhancing individuals and society with a digital layer, bringing the digital domain into the physical realm and being able to influence it in some way. For more on this, see [[Ambient Computing]] and [[Metaverse]]. If technology aspects fade into the background, the incarnation of technology will be increasingly human, a [[Technical Anthromorphism#Fulfilled technical anthromorphism]]. ## Key driver: If the interface is a personality, then the user experience is a relationship When physical objects have digital abilities and behaviors, users need the ability to intuitively access them somehow. Looking at the current state of [[Cognitive Services]] it makes sense that these digitally enhanced objects will be able to understand what is going on around them. They will react to the context, both on direct user input and based on proactive rules. We as humans are wired to anthropomorphize vaguely intelligent entities, especially if we don't understand them fully. We do it with living things like pets, but also with inanimate objects like dolls or cars. We give them names, plead with them if they don't work and sometimes form weird rituals around them. This can be encouraged by the way [objects are designed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kproPsch7i0). There is another aspect to this: Humans are pattern matchers. As explained, our brain instinctively processes input and reacts to some of it without consulting the conscious processing first. Way back in prehistoric times this instinct saved our lives when we had to differentiate quickly between "Can I hunt this?"" and "Will this hunt me?". Today we experience this for example as first impression bias, sorting people we meet and talk to into stereotypical templates based on our experiences and backgrounds. So what would happen if the objects could actually sense their environment, are aware of their context and are able to understand, engage and interact with people? Language is our main way of communication. If something else "talks" to us, we automatically try to humanize (anthropomorphize) it. Language is enough to trigger our instinct, our bias and our expectation. Based on the assumption that we will have the ability to see and interact with digital entities and assume that physical objects also represent digital entities, we as humans instinctively want to give those entities a personality. We as humans are wired to anthropomorphize vaguely intelligent entities, we do it with living things like puppies and cats, but also with objects like dolls or cars. "The resolution of relationships doesn't need to be high" - Hilmar Petursson To an extent this has been explored in fantasy and science fiction. A good example would be the Harry Potter books. It feels natural that wizards form a bond with "animate objects". One real example of this is [Fridgezoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgc5aLgK6CQ), small objects shaped like milk cartons, designed as cartoon animals, that live in your refrigerator. When you open your fridge, they greet you. If you leave the door open for a while, they will ask you to close it again to save energy. Even if they do not have any capabilities to further engage in conversation, people start talking to them. They tell them about their day and what’s on their mind. Essentially the "thing" became a "somebody" because the way they were designed. "It only needs to be as smart as a puppy" - Russel Davies And then, there is Jibo: If you want to know more, there is an amazing episode of (the always amazing) "Why’d You Push That Button?" podcast: [They welcomed a robot into their family, now they’re mourning its death, The story of Jibo](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18682780/jibo-death-server-update-social-robot-mourning). So as more and more things in our reality become digital, we will lean towards interacting with them in a social way, either engage and broker social contacts through them or even include them into our social circle. We don’t like JARVIS in the Iron Man movies because of what Tony Stark can do with it, but because it has this practical, yet edgy character. We don’t relate to Data in Star Trek because of its usefulness to the crew, but because its personality, turning the "it" into a plausible "he" or "she". And compare that to "the Terminator" where Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 definitely had a personality. ## Key driver: As we expect every digitally augmented thing to have a personality, we need designers to shape their appearance and their environment To illustrate this point, here is a thought experiment: *"Do you expect the self driving Audi A6 to behave differently than the self driving Ferrari FF. And if so, how?"* At this point, let’s not have the discussion if Ferrari will produce a self-driving car (of course they will), but focus on the obvious: The Ferrari FF has different properties and capabilities than the A6. This matters a lot, as most researchers in AI and [Embodied cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition) agree that intelligence and embodiment are tightly coupled issues. This just means: Your physical properties and capabilities define how you act in this world and while these digitally augmented things might not be really intelligent, we expect them to be. More importantly: We will project this expectation together with the notion of dealing with a specific personality, aligned to the context of the thing. So these personalities will need to emulate behavior within sensible parameters representative of their capabilities -> [[Embodiment Design]]. So if the user experience is a relationship, those parameters have to be carefully designed to not alienate users as well as to promote and foster actual relationships. In this case alienate means that the personality (= interface) behaves differently than expected (= is an anti-pattern). This has nothing to do with strong artificial intelligence, but rather with artificially created (emulated) or projected personalities. As the impact spans from individual, singular things to entire digital environments, it's not just a relationship between a thing, but a family of things, an environment of things, which transforms into a lifestyle supported by brands and their interpretation of how the environment should behave around us. This overall environment shaping is what I call relationship design. Thinking further, they digitally augmented things offer an experience comparable to living in a hyper personalized environment where every experience is catering to individual and society needs - it's about a truly mixed reality at world scale - and this is where we are back at the [[Metaverse]]. ## Applied relationship design Relationship design is the act of crafting and orchestrating the digital aspects of our lives into meaningful and personalized experiences. Relationship designers deal with individual touch points (physical, digital or mixed), shape their behavior and personalities on a micro level to make them approachable and relatable. Further, they act on the macro level and make sure that individual touch points fit into an overall coherent and pleasant experience. In a theme park this would be comparable to rides (micro) and the park itself (macro). From Microinteractions to Moments and Micromoments. Since the real world is much more dynamic, interactions with objects and digital layers might not have a clear cut context. As a result the paradigm of user experience design changes from "Create a [[User Experience]] for a given context" to "Set the context for a UX to happen". Relationship Designers need to be knowledgeable about human centered design and user expectations, but also social group dynamics, personal 1:1 interaction, making users feel comfortable and at-ease while providing a feeling of excitement and carefully crafted entertainment. Simply put: Relationship Designer = UX Designer + Community Manager + Escort Service + Movie Director. They are the gatekeepers that keep out the "Geocities of things". They make sure that if digital (infused) things become friends, not annoyances. They make sure that the digital future is centered around humans and relatable to us instead of disconnecting us. They will truly shape our surroundings, our environment, our world and reclaim the physical space, making our interactions with the world a magical experience. Hence Relationship Design will be the future profession to orchestrate individual digital aspects of physical experiences. It also needs an operating system to run these experiences on and orchestrate them: [[Unified Experience Platforms]]. ## How does relationship design look like? Basically the same as any design process, however placed in an aspirational, at the moment fictional, assumed future. Designed objects live and act in a highly dynamic environment and for all intents and purposes things cannot be considered individually, but as a functional part of context based scenarios. Hence the design process needs to extend beyond the scope of the individual thing and include assumed existing processes as well as assumed new processes, enabled by the existence of the object. For more, see [[Digital Relationship Dimensions]]. That said, it does start with the individual "thing" and especially its [[Embodiment Design]] ## Examples "Our ultimate goal with our virtual assistants is to provide a service: it's very different in different regions what that service is,. The chattiness—just talking—is actually something that our customers in Asia want to have. They don't have a purpose, they just want someone to talk to." - [Mercedes-Benz Chief Software Officer Magnus Östberg]([Mercedes Says Customers Want to Talk to Their Car Like a Friend (thedrive.com)](https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-says-customers-want-their-car-to-talk-to-them-like-a-friend)) There is Moxie, a companion for social emotional learning and child development: [Meet Moxie - The Revolutionary Robot Companion for Social-Emotional Learning (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQlNtxurleo) "Funny Sunny" is a low-cost variant of that: [Vtech Funny Sunny interaktive Lampen-Freundin - Unboxing mit Mia - Smyths Toys Superstores DE (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6L05cUxEts) [LG Aka personality phones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeQU_Fy5hOk): LG's new smartphones have backstories, names (hands-on). Bursting with character, the LG Aka phones channel Tamagotchi toys of the '90s with digital eyes and four distinct personalities [according to CNET](http://www.cnet.com/products/lg-aka/): there's a yellow phone, named Eggy, who falls in love easily; there is a white phone, named Wooky, who talks in slang; there is a blue phone, named Soul, who loves music and beer; and finally, there is the pink phone, YoYo, who is the only female character in the group and is named after her tendency to eat a lot of hamburgers and drink a lot of Coke, causing her weight to "yo-yo", which is definitely not the best character trait that LG could have given to its sole female character.