Kareem Yusuf: The importance of emotional tone in the digital age
Summary
TLDRThe speaker narrates their journey bridging the gap between structural designers and steel fabricators, highlighting the importance of tone in communication. They discuss how tone reflects intent and emotion, and its impact on team dynamics and customer engagement. The talk explores the evolution of tone in digital interactions, from text messaging to emoticons, and the role of technology in understanding customer behavior for personalized experiences. It concludes with the future of engagement being defined by personalization, driven by cognitive computing systems that learn and adapt.
Takeaways
- 🛠️ The story illustrates the gap between structural designers and steel fabricators, highlighting the importance of understanding different perspectives in a project.
- 🎓 The PhD researcher's experience at a steel fabrication plant helped bridge the gap by translating the fabricators' language and concerns into a format that designers could understand.
- 💻 The development of a decision support system based on heuristics and rules of thumb provided feedback to designers, showing how technology can be used to improve communication and collaboration.
- 🗣️ Tone is crucial in communication as it reflects intent, emotions, and reactions, and can significantly impact how messages are received.
- 🌐 In a diverse and digital world, setting the right tone is challenging but essential for effective communication, both internally within teams and externally with clients.
- 📱 The evolution of text messaging, from plain text to emoticons, shows how technology has been used to convey tone in digital communication.
- 📊 Analytics and user interaction data are used to understand customer behavior and preferences, which helps in setting the right tone for customer engagement.
- 📍 Location analytics, both indoor and outdoor, is emerging as a key area of innovation, providing deeper insights into customer journeys.
- 🤖 The future of engagement is personalization, where organizations strive to deliver the right level of intimacy and personalized experiences to their target audience.
- 🔮 Combining physiological and interaction data could provide a deeper understanding of customers, allowing for more contextually appropriate and timely engagement.
- 🔒 As technology advances, there are real issues that need to be addressed regarding data capture, privacy protection, and ensuring clear opt-in choices for users.
Q & A
What is the main challenge the steel fabricator faces with the design provided by the structural designer?
-The main challenge is that the design does not take into consideration the challenges of fabrication, making it difficult for the steel fabricator to create the joint.
Why did the PhD researcher leave the University of Leeds?
-The PhD researcher left the University of Leeds to bridge the gap in understanding between structural designers and steel fabricators by learning the fabricators' language and translating it into terms that resonate with designers.
What did the researcher do to help bridge the gap between designers and fabricators?
-The researcher captured the heuristics and rules of thumb that informed the fabricators' perspective on designs, codified them into computer models, and created a decision support system to provide feedback to designers.
Why is tone important in communication?
-Tone reflects our intent, frame of mind, emotion, or reaction to any given situation. It speaks directly to what we experience and can inspire, guide, disrupt, or hurt.
How can tone have unintended consequences in a workplace?
-Tone can have unintended consequences if it is misinterpreted, such as when a team member works on a task that was not intended to be assigned because the tone of a side comment was interpreted as direction.
What role does technology play in setting the right tone in digital interactions?
-Technology, such as emoticons and graphics, allows for the imbuing of tone in digital interactions, helping to convey emotion and intent more effectively.
How does the use of analytics help in understanding customer behavior?
-Analytics helps by capturing user interactions from various channels, providing insights into behaviors such as what pages were viewed, what was of most interest, and any adverse experiences.
What is the significance of location analytics in understanding customer journeys?
-Location analytics, both indoor and outdoor, enriches understanding by providing data on dwell time and physical path analysis, which helps discern actual customer journeys.
How might physiological and interaction data help in setting the right tone for customer engagement?
-Physiological and interaction data might provide context about the individual's state, allowing for more personalized and contextually appropriate engagement, such as a car service app providing a healthy snack based on the user's blood sugar level.
What are the challenges faced when advancing technology for data capture?
-Challenges include data capture privacy protection and ensuring clear and appropriate opt-in choices for users.
How does personalization play a role in the future of engagement?
-Personalization is key to the future of engagement, with organizations focusing on striking the right level of intimacy with their target audience and delivering the right personalized experience.
Outlines
🔧 Bridging the Gap Between Design and Fabrication
The speaker begins by illustrating a scenario involving a steel trust joint, which is aesthetically pleasing to a structural designer but challenging for a steel fabricator to produce. The speaker, a PhD researcher, left academia to understand the fabricators' perspective and bridge the communication gap with designers. They learned the heuristics and rules of thumb that guided the fabricators and translated these into computer models. These models were used to create a decision support system that provided feedback to designers on how fabricators would react to their designs. The story emphasizes the importance of tone in communication, which is crucial in leadership and across cultures in a global organization. The speaker shares personal experiences where tone had unintended consequences, highlighting the need for careful communication in a digital world.
📱 The Evolution of Digital Tone
The speaker discusses how organizations must constantly consider the tone of their internal and external communications. As a technologist, they focus on leveraging technology to understand customer interactions and set the appropriate tone. Current technology allows capturing user interactions and gaining insights through analytics. Location analytics, both indoor and outdoor, is an emerging area of innovation. The speaker suggests that combining physiological and interaction data might provide more context for setting the right tone in customer interactions. They acknowledge the challenges of data capture, privacy protection, and user consent but argue that deeper understanding leads to more valuable customer engagement. The future of engagement is seen as personalization, with machine learning used to infer intent and present personalized offers or content.
🌐 The Future of Engagement: Personalization and Tone
The speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of tone in technological evolution, particularly in identifying the right time for engagement. They suggest that cognitive computing systems, which learn from experience, can help capture tonal connections and improve over time. The speaker highlights the need for technological innovations to consider tone in all digital interactions. They stress that tone is a fundamental aspect of being human and will drive technological advancements for years to come. The speaker ends by thanking the audience.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Steel Trust Joint
💡Fabrication Challenges
💡Heuristics
💡Decision Support System
💡Tone
💡Cultural Diversity
💡Digital Interactions
💡Emoticon
💡Physiological Data
💡Personalization
💡Cognitive Computing
Highlights
The story of a steel trust joint illustrates the beauty and challenges in structural design.
The steel fabricator's perspective is crucial for practical design implementation.
The PhD researcher's journey to bridge the gap between design and fabrication.
Learning the steel fabricators' language and translating it for structural designers.
Capturing heuristics and rules of thumb in computer models to aid design feedback.
The importance of tone in communication, reflecting intent and emotion.
The unintended consequences of tone in a large, diverse software development organization.
How a simple text message can be imbued with tone through punctuation and acronyms.
The emoticon as a game changer in digital communication for setting tone.
Organizations must consider tone in internal and external communications.
Technological innovations in graphics devices and networks have enhanced tone setting in messages.
The current state-of-the-art in capturing user interactions for understanding customer behavior.
The emerging importance of location analytics in understanding customer journeys.
The challenge of understanding the true emotional state of an individual during interaction.
The potential of combining physiological and interaction data for better tone setting.
The ethical considerations of data capture, privacy protection, and user consent.
The future of engagement lies in personalization and striking the right level of intimacy.
Machine learning's role in inferring intent and presenting personalized offers or content.
The necessity of personalization being relevant and occurring in context.
The importance of timing in personalization and the concept of 'in the right time'.
Cognitive computing systems' potential in identifying the right time for tone setting.
The enduring question of tone in technological innovations and its impact on human interaction.
Transcripts
let's begin with a story about a steel
trust joint a steel fabricator and a PhD
researcher here's our steel trust joint
the kind you'd see walking through the
airport or taking in a game at the
stadium to the structural designer this
joint is a thing of beauty it's a work
of
art now let's meet the steel fabricator
who has to fabricate this
joint he's not looking that impressed
with this
joint because once again he has received
a design that does not take into
consideration the challenges of
fabrication
enter our not so dashian PhD
researcher
me 18 years ago all Blair eyed
intent and bridging this Gap in
understanding I left the hollowed
confines of the University of Leeds and
went to a steel fabrication plant in
Bolton England where I got to learn the
steel fabricators
language understand their point of view
and translate into terms that would
resonate with the structural
designer I captured the heuristics the
rules of thumb that informed their
perspective on any given design and I
codified these in computer
models I used these models to create a
decision support system that provided
feedback to the designers as they
drafted their designs on how Fabricators
would react and
why why do I tell you this story because
I know somebody's
wondering because it embodies this
question of
tone what tone did I need to adopt in
order to successfully engage with the
steel fabrication
what tone did my decision support system
need to strike in order to be well
received by the structural designer and
ironically how come I spending all this
time innovating with technology to make
it do what we as humans do so naturally
which is to set
tone indeed why does tone even
matter tone reflects our intent our
frame of mind emotion or reaction to any
given situation tone speaks directly to
what we experience tone is instinctive
but setting the right tone takes
work as a leader of a large
geographically and culturally diverse
software development organization I can
attest to the fact that across regions
teams develop their own
culture and we must all be aware that as
we use our tone depending upon where we
are that tone can equally inspire fire
and guide or disrupt and
hurt and tone can so easily have
unintended
consequences I have found that you will
not recognize the power of your tone
until one evening you walk in the
corridors and find a member of your team
hard at work on a task you never
intended to give why because the tone of
your side comment was interpreted as
Direction and yeah I've been guilty of
making that happen too but how does tone
translate in a world full of digital
interactions well to explore that let's
take the text message when text
messaging started we could all send
ourselves simple questions like this in
this case a simple question that implies
a need to know but plain and devoid of
emotion so with the state ofthe art at
the time we tried to imbue tone by
leveraging wellestablished low Tech
punctuation clearly we can now see
there's some excitement
here but still seeking to imbue this
medium with even more tone we all soon
fell in love with the acronym resulting
in
this feel free to substitute your own
favorite three-letter acronym there
as technologist we knew we could do
better and so with Innovations in
graphics devices and networks we got the
game changer the
emoticon the emoticon changed
everything now we could really set tone
further qualifying our
messages indeed we could do away with
words all
together that one to my wife was in the
audience by the way
or we could eliminate the alphabet all
together that one from a friend of mine
who's a retired tank Army
Commander it means onwards against all
obstacles in your
way organizations have to consider how
to set tone constantly both internally
with their employees and externally with
their clients customers and consumers as
as a technologist I focus on how I
leverage technology to enable my clients
to understand who they're engaging with
and set the right tone as they
engage current state-ofthe-art allows us
to capture user interactions from
various channels like mobile apps or
websites and leveraging analytics gain
insights into key behavioral data so
that we're able to answer questions such
as how many people looked at a page what
what seemed to be of most interest what
did they do next did they have any
adverse
experiences location analytics both
indoor and outdoor is emerging as a key
area of innovation leveraging advances
in smartphones and indoor sensors we're
now able to further enrich our
understanding of customer
Behavior gleaning insights from data
such as dwell time how long was an
individual stood in front of a store
display
or physical path analysis what path was
taken between departments or
locations we together all this data to
discern actual customer Journeys will
underpin further Innovation because
important to remember that for the
individual these distinct touch points
with an organization are often part of a
continuous experience as they research
discover acquire and then use a
particular product or
service but for all these
advances we still know so little about
the true state of the individual at the
time of interaction because the data
provides little to no emotional
context how might we gain context so
that we're better able to set the right
tone looking ahead I think the
combination of physiological and
interaction data might provide an answer
imagine using a mobile app to call a car
service as I'm sure some of us did today
but this particular app can read your
physiological data as you touch the
phone the app
learns that your blood sugar is running
low and the driver turns up with a
healthy
snack once again feel free to substitute
your own preference in that section
now I would be remiss if I did not
acknowledge that there are real issues
for us to work through as we advance
technology with regards data capture
privacy protection and ensuring clear
and appropriate opt-in choices for users
but the point is with a deeper
understanding we are able to engage much
more valuably with our customers and
deliver a better and more personalized
service in fact I believe the future of
Engagement can be defined with just one
word
personalization and for organizations
differentiation will Center on striking
the right level of intimacy with their
target
audience and delivering the right
personalized
experience today we already use machine
learning to infer intent and present
something approaching a personalized
offer or content for example if an
individ ual shows significant interest
by visiting the same product page say
five times in an hour we can on the next
visit present content that provides more
insights into that product's use or
perhaps a discount offer that tips the
scales in in favor of a purchase
decision we can also customize
experiences leveraging analytics to
recognize past behavior and modify the
ongoing experience of
accordingly however in our drive for
increasing levels of
personalization we must remember that
personalization needs not only to be
relevant but also to occur in context
often thought of as in real time but
when I say in real time I'm not
suggesting some particular time frame
like say 20 milliseconds but that rather
things need to occur in the moment that
matters
indeed I prefer the phrase in the right
time it is simply not a good idea to
congratulate me on my airline seat
upgrade on a flight that's just been
cancelled and that's happened to some of
us I'm
sure so technological Evolution must
capture these tonal connections
attributes and rules that allow us to
identify the right time the very nature
of this problem space pushes the
boundaries of traditional approaches but
lends itself quite well to cognitive
Computing systems systems that are able
to tease out and infer caal
relationships and that get better over
time as they learn by experience which
interestingly enough is the same way
that we as humans
do in an Ever evolving Digital World a
wash with increasingly complex digital
interactions
this question of tone permeates
everything that we as technologists do
and will shape technological innovations
for decades to come
why because at its core it drives us it
pushes us to attempt to codify to render
en code one of the deepest most
Elemental aspects of Being Human tone
thank
you oh
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