CR114: Why human experience matters more than ever with Kevin Magee, All human

Technology can scale almost everything—except human experience. In a world driven by efficiency, what does it mean to design for how people truly feel? It's about transforming user interactions into ongoing insight and innovation, rooted in empathy and understanding. 

 

This week, Dave, Esmee and Rob talk to Kevin Magee, Chief Technology Officer at All human about helping organizations transform customer experiences with a focus on design, engineering, and what is called "digital performance." 
 

TLDR:

00:41 Introduction of Kevin Magee with Guinness or sparkling water?
03:23 Rob wonders, is Apple really opening up its ecosystem?
11:40 Deep dive with Kevin into design, engineering, and digital performance
36:30 How tools built for one purpose can transform entire systems
48:35 Weekend city breaks and pursuing a master’s in psychology 

 

Guest

Kevin Magee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmagee/

 

Hosts

Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/
Rob Kernahan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/
Esmee van de Giessen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/

 

Production

Marcel van der Burg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/
Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/

 

Sound

Ben Corbett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/
Louis Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/
 

'Cloud Realities' is an original podcast from Capgemini

Creators and Guests

Host

Dave Chapman

Chief Cloud Evangelist with nearly 30 years of global experience in strategic development, transformation, program delivery, and operations, I bring a wealth of expertise to the world of cloud innovation. In addition to my professional expertise, I’m the creator and main host of the Cloud Realities podcast, where we explore the transformative power of cloud technology.

Host

Esmee van de Giessen

Principal Consultant Enterprise Transformation and Cloud Realities podcast host, bridges gaps to drive impactful change. With expertise in agile, value delivery, culture, and user adoption, she empowers teams and leaders to ensure technology enhances agility, resilience, and sustainable growth across ecosystems.

Host

Rob Kernahan

VP Chief Architect for Cloud and Cloud Realities podcast host, drives digital transformation by combining deep technical expertise with exceptional client engagement. Passionate about high-performance cultures, he leverages cloud and modern operating models to create low-friction, high-velocity environments that fuel business growth and empower people to thrive.

Producer

Marcel van der Burg

VP Global Marketing and producer of the Cloud Realities podcast, is a strategic marketing leader with 33+ years of experience. He drives global cloud marketing strategies, leveraging creativity, multi-channel expertise, and problem-solving to deliver impactful business growth in complex environments.

What is Cloud Realities?

Exploring the practical and exciting alternate realities that can be unleashed through cloud driven transformation and cloud native living and working.

Each episode, our hosts Dave, Esmee & Rob talk to Cloud leaders and practitioners to understand how previously untapped business value can be released, how to deal with the challenges and risks that come with bold ventures and how does human experience factor into all of this?

They cover Intelligent Industry, Customer Experience, Sustainability, AI, Data and Insight, Cyber, Cost, Leadership, Talent and, of course, Tech.

Together, Dave, Esmee & Rob have over 80 years of cloud and transformation experience and act as our guides though a new reality each week.

Web - https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/cloud-realities-podcast/
Email - [e-mail]

CR114 Importance of creating good human experiences with Kevin Magee, Allhuman
[00:00:00] It's in, or whatever it is. And then you say any point again, and then that whole section just gets cut out. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. I was gonna say, I could just make stuff up like Rob, or, I mean, honestly, you wouldn't be the first.
Welcome to Cloud Realities, an original podcast from Capgemini and this week a conversation show, exploring the ever. [00:00:30] rowing importance of creating good human experiences, even more so in a world of ai. I'm Dave Chapman, I'm Esmee van de Giessen and I'm Rob Kernahan. And I am delighted to say that joining us for this conversation, which I, in my opinion, gets more and more important as every day goes by and technology becomes more and more part of our lives, is Kevin Kevin Magee, the CTO, all human.
Kevin, how are you? I'm great. Great to be here to see you. Yeah, it's good to, [00:01:00] good to talk. Whereabouts in the world are you beaming in from today? Today I am in Dublin, Ireland. Do you live right in town? Just on the outskirts. Obviously famous for many things, but famous for a specific drink. Do you have for visitors of Dublin, a recommendation for the best pin Guinness?
I thought you were gonna talk about sparkling water, you know, as being a, a famous drink. Go that way. If you like, go, go, go that way if you'd like.
Yeah, there's, there's so many I wouldn't like [00:01:30] to pick, uh, I, I, I would be banished from the country if I reckon there was a controversial legend there somewhere.Yeah. You're trying to create controversy early on. You just gotta say from the brewery and that's it. There's obviously the brewery. Perfect answer. This is Robert waving the flag of Switzerland right there. Oh, there you go. Straight away.
Straight in with the, what's the politically correct and non-offensive answer to a question like that.
Dave, I'm used to answering your difficult questions with Swiss type responses, so I mean, it was clockwork, [00:02:00] Robert. Gotta get straight in with the right answer. It's almost like I've created a skill in my head. I didn't have to think about it. I'd just say, how do I sit on the fence on this one?
If you were like, say Dungeons and Dragons or Street Fighter or something, would that be like your secret? You know, your secret thing that you can do, that you can disarm any situation, disarm, politically neutral answer, deescalate, politically neutral. Take it down with a statement. Jobs are good. One. Beautifully done. Robert's here everyone. Hello. S how are you doing? I'm good. And I'm [00:02:30] actually freezing. How about you? Freezing. Freezing. I have to get used to the colder weather. Well, I, I do, I have noticed that my heating has started to kick in again.
Yeah. Well mine is not so, uh, no, I'm freezing. Which, try turning it on. I mean, no, I, I'm in my home office and there's no, there is a heater, but it's electric actually. So I can do that with my app from my bed as soon as I know, like, you know, start heating my office.Yes. Want, that's an experience. That's, that's a [00:03:00] good digital experience. It is. Unless you do not touch the button, then nothing's gonna happen.
Unfortunately, they can't read your mind yet. But if Robert has it his way, we'll all have chips.
Oh, yeah. Chips in your brain. You'll, you'll, you'll be aware you're cold and it'll just switch on in the background.
Yeah, that's, that's what's gonna happen. That whole human brain interface. It's coming. It's coming. Tell you now talking of experiences. What's confusing you this week, Rob? Oh, well, a debate that continues to rage with [00:03:30] technology companies and large political bodies. And, uh, apple, again in the press for, um, having to open up their ecosystem and they've not quite done it in the way that they should have done.
Mm-hmm. And the confusion is Apple say. If I keep you in my walled garden enclosure. I can manage that experience and make it outstanding. And the, you say, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what you are doing is mini, uh, manipulating the consumer, increasing [00:04:00] prices, and you're controlling everything, and we should be more open about this.
So you sort of say, well, if it's open, that gives me more choice, maybe a better experience in that sense. And then, but. Is it going to wreck the curated experience? And I'm not sure it is, but maybe it is. I don't know. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, um, benefit to be had from everything just works in a standardized way, but is it what I actually want or is it fair that I'm controlled in that way?
So anyway, Dave, I'm slightly fu and as an Apple user and I'm an Android user, I think you are best to probably answer this for me. So [00:04:30] I'll bump my confusion over to you
now. I, I, I honestly think there's a PhD in this subject 'cause I, I think it really gets to the heart of how much do we value our experiences and things like that.
And the walled garden in, in my mind, undoubtedly creates, uh, level playing field ecosystem experience now. Apple in this [00:05:00] particular case, have created and thought about that experience like end to end. All their devices have got the same corner dimensions all the way through to their UIs, to their use of touch, all of those sorts of things.
So I think there is an argument here that says it is their right to keep that closed and, and when that become, and that was never a problem when Apple were like. On their knees and before their prodigious growth post iPhone [00:05:30] and iPad, nobody cared. It gets to a point where it now becomes, you know, mass market to the point of standard, isn't it?
Almost mono monopoly. Yeah. And then, and then of course everybody cares. But at that point, what's the trade off here? Now I've got a very specific. Recent experience of this. Go on then. Are you ready? Fire away. We're all waiting. Just gonna shoot right to the heart of it. Robert, are you ready? Is it, I You've set expectation quite high here, Dave, so this better be high impact.
So I was on a, I was on a work trip recently and I [00:06:00] left my iPods charging case. AirPods in case, let's say again, again, again, on the airplane. It is a relatively, it's a relatively regular experience. I'm not sure part of the design, but I do it quite regularly. The last time I dropped my AirPods case and the AirPods themselves jumped out of the case, hid under the bed and the case closed.
Hang on. The technology told you that had happened though when you got in the taxi to leave and you ignored it. So the experience actually said you've left [00:06:30] your AirPods behind went, no, it can't be true. That's actually true. Let's remind everyone of that little to do that is actually true. Anyway, moving on. Moving on. So I, uh, I then decided, um, I'd get a bit of an upgrade and Rob and I have talked on a number of occasions about the, uh, Bowers and Wilkins in years, you know, other, other air, other AirPods are available sort of thing. Um. I like a Bowers and Wilkins ovary, so I'm like, ah, you know what? I won't bother just replacing that case. I'll, I'll get some bows and Wilkins. [00:07:00] And the question is like, are they better than an AirPods Pro two? Right. So I think, you know, my personal opinion, and Rob, I think you're in on this, is from a sound perspective, they're unquestionably better like. Ally, almost. It is right. Real impact when you use 'em and go, Ooh, next level.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next level. It's head, almost head turning. Lee. Good. Pretty much straight out the box, however. Their actual usage, the connection to the phone, what you can see on the phone as a result, how the app works is [00:07:30] unquestionably worse. Yeah, because, because it's, but you could argue that Apple have made it difficult for them to integrate.
'cause they want you to buy their stuff. They want you to buy their headphones and not a third party. And this is part of the eus argument, which says why, why can't you use a third party thing? It's forcing you down a particular route. And this is, this is the debate, isn't it? So you have actually a better audio experience, but the user integration and the connection experience is, is, is is much worse.
Bit flaky. Robert. It's a bit flaky. It is. It can be, yeah. [00:08:00] On Android it's fine. 'cause Android's open. So we're good there. Not just calling out Android's better, but yeah, I'll just put that point in. No disconnect.
As as an Apple. As an Apple user. Yeah, what's your, where, where, where's your head at or where's your heart at?
I have so many in ears. I don't know how much money I've actually spent on them, but it's ridiculous. But now I ended up with the, uh, the, the over ears, uh, iPod, uh, max, or I don't know what they're called, but huge headphones. The first thing people say when they actually, you [00:08:30] know, they, people look at them and because they're obvious and they're, oh, they're really cool, but they're quite heavy.
Like, yeah, I know they're quite heavy, but, so I'm actually going for the full ecosystem experience. Mm-hmm. Because it's, you know, as soon as I put them on music starts playing, I can see on my, uh, apple, my new 17 Pro Plateau. I can see straight away, you know, what number's playing. I, I really love that entire experience.
And then I have like three other cases here. Laying around, which are in [00:09:00] ears like, yeah. But some soon the best ones in obvi obviously. But in the end I, you know, over ears. You bias us the integration experience over the audio experience then. Yep. You see this is, yeah. Yep. Surely we could have both if they just made it a bit easier for the vendors to integrate.But they don't want it, do they? Yeah. I have to admit, because I'm, I use a Garmin, uh, watch and I, and I, every two years, I, no, it's not the entire ecosystem experience. So I go to Apple Watch again, and then I'm [00:09:30] disappointed. That was one of the things they called out, and I do go back to the Garmin watch.
The watch experience, I find a smartwatch really useful, but I hate the battery life on the ones that run down. So I use one that has a 15 day battery life, but sometimes the integration can be a little bit clunky and you're like, that should be a bit better. So we we're not actually answering the question date.
We're still confused. We're still confused. So I, I think it is within, I think it's actually within their right to to [00:10:00] hold their end-to-end experience because their end-to-end experience. Is very successful. Uh, and I, you know, I won't go into it just in the interest of time, but another example is Apple TV's like app.
The Apple TV's interface is the unification of the experience across multiple different TV platforms. Is is stellar. It's like there, there, there isn't a better version of how you interact with, you know, kind of streaming media than I, I think Apple tv. So I, I think like, you know, [00:10:30] credit credit where credit's due that end-to-end design is, uh, is absolutely amazing.
The fact it's got to a point where it's so dominant in the market, probably as a result of iPhone. It is not necessarily a negative. Now I don't want to necessarily talk against it. 'cause like I said, at the other side of my mouth, I'm loving the b and w sound. But when those dropouts happen, I'm like, come on lads.
You do. There's EU regulators, Dave, who are shuddering at your, uh, at your [00:11:00] conclusions. That's all I'm saying. Someone has to come out and say, Robert, you know. To have the difficult conversation about experience. If we end up as a result of that, having to install drivers to run different devices and stuff like that, like these, Marcel likes that he's a Windows fan.
He's a Windows user. Yeah. He likes a good driver installation to crash your machine. When you bought those headphones, you wear a Marcel and you put, you have to connect them to your, uh, your Windows 95 pc. Did you have, did you have to get a floppy disc with the drivers on. No instant, [00:11:30] instant, uh, collaboration.So it was, it was fine. Nothing happened. Just plug and play. Yeah, nothing happened. That's exactly the problem.
No issues on that note. On that note. I don't think we did get to the bottom of it, but God, that's a, that's a good subject. Alright, then let's crack on. So Kevin, let's kick off by just understanding a little bit about All Human as an organization.
Just, just clue us in what are you guys bringing to the market and, you know, what's the differentiator?
[00:12:00] So all human as an organization, it's been around for about 20 years. Uh, I recently joined, um, but I've had the luxury of being a customer twice, so I got to know the team and it was a fantastic experience being on the other side of it.
So when, when we hooked, but um. As a company, there's three kind of big areas that they focus on, but it's all covered in this idea of helping organizations transform the customer experiences. That's ultimately the kind of the driving mission and, you [00:12:30] know, big strong, uh, focus on design, engineering, and what we call digital performance.
And it that, that's really important because the digital performance piece is this, you know, amazing kind of behavioral insight into. The impact of what is created, because most of what we do is driven by, you know, public facing, you know, so it's external experiences. And so you get this, this fantastic, you know, feedback loop where, you know, it's not just a design or a, a product [00:13:00] into the wild.
It's this product that now it's feedback, you know, and you can see who other people like it or interact with it, or you know, all your hypotheses that were there at the beginning. Were they actually, you know, correct or not. And you know, you get this, this feedback so you know what, what the world is. Um, I suppose in, you know, that behavioral side of it, you know, we get that and then that feeds, you know, into everything else that comes later, you know, better designs, better engineering, you know, better.So you've got a, it might be Yeah, a feed, [00:13:30] a feedback loop, basically. Correct? Totally. From the original CX concept. Yeah. Through, through execution and then back into. Kind of designation. Yeah. And, and as an organization, we've typically been hired in many cases to solve these really tricky g early problems that people have that, yeah.
You know, for different industries from, you know, whether it's from financial services, whether it's, you know, uh, energy tourism, you know, healthcare, you know, they're all of the, the big ones. You know, we end up in these scenarios [00:14:00] that these organizations that either have a problem, they've an opportunity, they've got some.
Challenge to, you know, that, that need solving. And, and over the years they've done some, you know, really interesting, um, you know, propositions before my time. You know, they, they came up with this concept for actually the average postal service, uh, on plus, which was, uh, the first digital snap, you know, where, you know, it was invented during the COVID period where you can go onto the website and you can just buy stamps and you can then basically write.[00:14:30]
Onto the actual, um, you know, envelope in the top corner, just gives you this digital grid of numbers and letters that you, you write it on and, uh, you know, just post it. You don't have to go into an actual physical building post office to get a, a, an actual stamp. So it's this, these incredible, you know, uh, solutions.
And that was done, you know, with this, you know, problem, you know, but came up with this opportunity and now is creating, uh, this, this whole new revenue stream for that organization. And there's many other examples of that.
But there, there are some [00:15:00] things in society, like the stamp thing that you, you discussed, which, um, are slightly archaic now, and it's ripe for a reinvent.
It took COVID to need it. But the idea of going into a post office in the queue and buying stamps to then send letters, I know letters of declining, but it just feel like, why am I in this queue with digital transactions now being the basis for how society interacts? But it's, I mean, it's a really good example.
There's still quite a lot of that out there. Where you go, are you saying that you don't value. The local community aspect of going into, see, I [00:15:30] love the way you twisted that, Dave. You took something and you just sent it into a very uncomfortable, just, I obviously value community, but community is not standing in a queue to buy stamps.
Community is coming together and supporting each other. Well, you said it, not us. Uh, but I I think Rob raises a useful point. So when, when it comes to design, Kevin, so we've talked about. Uh, I think we're, we're all very pro design led thinking and experience design in, in multiple levels of the digital world, whether that be [00:16:00] an organization designing experience for their staff or an organization designing experience for their customers and consumers.
Design has a real place to play, I think, generally. And, and, and do you think that technology generally, particularly IT departments are leveraging design enough still? You know, this is where I become opinionated and ah, excellent. We love that. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. I just feel that there's so many missed opportunities and.[00:16:30] I know, uh, we'll have to watch the audio levels because I'm probably gonna get a bit passionate on this one, you know? But experience to me is really important because whether you're building a product where you're either in an organization, you know, trying to, you know, do e-commerce or you're, you know, you're in a corporate or whatever the, the actual, you know, mission ends up being, there's too many cases where we end up in this scenario that.
Where, you know, I kind of call it, you know, you see that slapping chatbots onto the front of a website just because you can, [00:17:00] and you see variations of that, you know, throughout the stack of organizations, you know, from, from the IT teams all the way to the, you know, the front end, you know, support, marketing, whatever teams that.
That I, I just fear that a lot of our colleagues in the tech sector are being too myopic and too, too small minded in, in, in looking at what the overall potential is. And, and, and I, unfortunately, I see too many of them becoming the department of No right now. And Yeah. You know, and for me. You [00:17:30] know, there is this incredible opportunity to, you know, reimagine, you know, the, the, the potential.
And, and I'll give you a great example. So I've been using this, I dunno whether it's a corny analogy, but I'll throw it out there anyway. Mm-hmm. It's around the whole AI thing. And I kind of look at the whole AI thing. It's like we're at this transition between when the, the, the radio broadcasters in the forties were evolving into tv and the shows at the time were basically, they were like radio shows with [00:18:00] cameras.
Nothing changed. It was just, you know, uh. Probably a bit like this podcast where, yeah, everybody's sitting around, they're talking to a microphone and there's cameras on it. But it wasn't actually utilizing the experience that was available with the emergence of TV and what could be done, and it was only when you know, clever people came along, whether there were producers or creatives or others who started to reimagine what could be done with this new technology that that.
Brought it to a whole new dimension and transformed society over many decades, and we're at that [00:18:30] period, I think with ai where there's, there's so many use cases where there, you know, we're just, we're just doing radio with cameras, you know, we're just slapping AI into places where, yeah, you might get a, a few benefits, but we're not really reimagining what the whole thing is about.
And I think an awful lot of it departments are, are not really embracing the business potential of why they're there. I, I've always been this believer. That as a technologist, you can't just be in the cave of [00:19:00] technology. You've got to be in the cave of adding value and whatever, wherever that value may be.
It may be internal value, may be external value. Revenue could, whatever it's, but you've always got to be able to point to something that says there's value here.
Is there another element to this as well, which predates AI in terms of delivering particularly internal user experience that. Comes from a point of view of, say, creating a build on a device.
And that build has got to [00:19:30] be secure. It's got to be, you know, kind of locked down to a certain extent and it's gonna need a certain series of apps on that, on that device. And it's thought through from that perspective. Versus it's thought through from the perspective of, you know, how do my internal users have a great experience here?
What does that look like? It seems to me that, I'm not sure everybody's really caught up to the fact that internal users these days are gonna be expecting, and quite rightly, a consumer grade experience. Yeah, [00:20:00] I think even back in the days when, when the Google search experience originally came out, it changed the rules entirely for every website that came after that, because essentially the expectation was it needs to work at the speed of Google.
You know? And, and I think for me, you know, ev, all of the consumer devices that we see out there are raising that bar. Another example that I would use at the moment is, I think. There is a massive, uh, massive, massive transformation going on [00:20:30] kind of in a, in a, in a semi subtle way with the world of financial services.
Uh, you know, apps like you look at all of the traditional, you know, the major banks everywhere in the world that usually there are app experiences. Um. Let's just say not fantastic. Whereas you start to look at the new thinking that the likes of Revolut are bringing in and some of the other organizations, they're bringing this, this really new reimagined experience and and I sometimes equate that to, I dunno if you're familiar with this idea of [00:21:00] Conway's law.
Oh yeah. It's this, you know, concept that, you know, essentially your org structure ref, you know, shapes the technology and, you know, you see, you know, you see it in websites, you see it in apps where, you know, every department has to have their part of the app. Mm. You know, and they're not, they're thinking about it in their silos, not as the overall experience.
And, and I think inside there's, so, yeah, there's so much of that. And, and, you know, you also look at the, the, the internal experience I used to describe it that, um. Uh, uh, and [00:21:30] I, and I use this mantra all the time, you know, make the technology disappear. You know, so holding up my phone here, I don't, you know, when I'm calling on my phone, I don't think about the complex, you know, uh, tech in the device.
I'm not thinking about the billing system. I'm not thinking about the network. I'm thinking about calling my friend, or I'm thinking about, you know, the, the actual act that I'm trying to undertake. And so the technology has blended into the background and, um, and it's, it's not in the way, but you look at many internal.
Tech, you know, deliverables, the [00:22:00] technology's in your face. You know, I don't know how many times I've seen in organizations where it could be a dashboard and it's like the dashboard is loading. It's, it's so slow that, you know, go have lunch or go have a coffee while it loads, but like, that's terrible experience for internal folks. Never get away with it externally.
And there's this bit though that says sometimes systems you have to use like that dashboard, there's no alternative. But other times it can be the difference between product selection. So, [00:22:30] uh, smart TVs are a great example now where we expect them to be amplified with a marketplace and everything else.
That's just the way the world works. You get your content over the internet as you go. A load of focus has shifted to how fast and responsive is the user interface. Does it have the apps that I want? Is it intuitive to use? And when TV started going smart, let's be honest, they had some of the worst interfaces going and you still see them and they're slow and they're clunky and they're frustrating.
You click the button. It's a great one where. [00:23:00] Conversation shifted to, is the interface fast and does it give me everything I need in a click or two? As opposed to the having to hunt for your app to go get your content. And it's, it's that I still don't understand why major consumer organizations continue to turf out these what are terrible experiences and then they, there's a surprise when nobody buys the product and it's like, yeah.
'cause it's how humans react to experience. It's like the internet connected toaster, Dave, isn't it? Who came up with the idea that said, I need an internet connected toaster? [00:23:30] And you're like, what is the experience you're doing there? Or is it somebody walked in and just said, we're gonna internet connect all our devices and we've discussed this before.
It's like it's an unnecessary experience. 'cause I have to be at the toaster to get my toast. So it's like, what is that? Anyway, sorry. I'll start, I'll start run. I mean, not very forward thinking position on user experience there, Robert, but we'll, we'll blow past that. Kevin, can you, you talked about the feedback loop and I think that's one of the most fascinating parts in an organization 'cause we all say, oh we want that feedback loop. Can you give an example, like very pragmatic, how that feedback [00:24:00] loop really changed direction in terms of product or, and how did it end up in the product backlog? Do you have like an example?
I think there's probably so many different examples. One of the ways I'm a huge believer in feedback is just speaking generally, you know, um, and, and I get specific in a minute, but I think there, I come from a background where I've got this mixed background that I like to describe about on the product side and on the kinda solution side and kind. I think the same challenge is there though, and [00:24:30] it's, it's similar to, you have to have value, but it also means you can't be in a place where you're, you, you're, you're, you're kind of arrogant that you have all the answers before you actually create something. 'cause you don't know how it's necessarily gonna react and, and resonate with, with a community.
And so there was a, there was a use case a number of years ago around a a, an innovation and research lab for a large, you know, uh, healthcare organization and. One of the things that we had, we had this mixed disciplinary team of, [00:25:00] you know, we had, you know, operations people who were deeply immersed in healthcare. We data scientists, we had software engineers and so on, and, and we came up with this, you know, really interesting what we taught from a, from a solution perspective. It was, it was in the area that lots of people across the organization were having trouble looking up. Various clauses in contracts, and this of course, was a massive organization.
They had millions of contracts and so we were like, great data scientists. We'll, you know, natural language [00:25:30] processing. This is all before the the gen AI world, you know, we slurped them all up. We brought them all in, ran some fancy stuff, and we said perfect. Going back to that analogy of the Google uh, interface, what we'll do is we just give them a Google search bar.
And you know, great job Don, we're geniuses and we rolled it out and it was the biggest flop ever. Nobody used it and it was like, okay, what's the problem? And the problem was these are very busy operational people. [00:26:00] They're not enamored with the technology. They're sitting there with a search bar and they're looking at it going, okay, I need to look up some, some obscure thing about.
Ambulance services or something, or whatever it might've been. And, uh, it just wasn't coming back with the results. And we were like, yeah, but just use, like, you know, and, and or not and compose, you know, this, this, this construct. Uh, it was, we might as well have just have been talking, you know. Yeah, like we were aliens from Mars and [00:26:30] it was this really, I suppose it was a hard lesson in that we were arrogant.
We went out and we thought we'd solved the problem. Technically it worked. Technically it was brilliant. Technically, the data science was fantastic and you know, all of the hard tech stuff was amazing. The interface was. Uh, it wasn't an okay interface as, as, uh, a search interface went, but it didn't meet the need of the actual, you know, the audience.
And you know how after a bit of a rethink and working with various users, we came back with a, essentially [00:27:00] what ended up being a form of a wizard interface. And we kind of guided people through what it was that they needed and that became a success. But it was, it was that kinda lesson where. We should have done that engagement way earlier in the project rather than, you know, just roll it out and go, we're brilliant.
And it's, you know, it's all going. Everybody's gonna love this. So that will be one tangible example.
Let's, um, let's stay with that example, uh, for a second and just talk about then the holistic process that went [00:27:30] around that. So it sounded like you had one dimension at play there, which is, we've technically solved the problem.
Let's just step outside of that and then look back on it and what process did you go through, and if there's a better example, feel free to, to move on to a different example. But what would you describe as being the right holistic process to deal with a problem like that? I think wherever we were in the In that particular scenario, I think we took the world of, we're in a lab [00:28:00] where we're kind of running this innovation kind of facility and because it was pretty advanced technology at the time and you know, like what we were, what we were trying to deliver. We just felt it was going to be built as a team, you know, that, you know, we were just gonna camp out in the cave and create this thing and, and just roll it out.
And we did have some experts from the business, but they were also, you know, probably blinded by the science and [00:28:30] blinded by the technology. And we forgot that lesson on feedback very early on. Um, I think it was just. You know, probably like the, the, the, the rolling snowball down the, down, down the mountain.
It was just building up speed and, you know, we completely overlooked this thing and got that hard lesson when we released it. Yeah. The team pivoted and we corrected it very quickly and it came back and became very successful. But it was, it was that moment of reality check, you [00:29:00] know, that we actually forgot the point that we were trying to come out here.
We had heard the, the problem, you know, we've got these, this issue looking up this, these clauses and contracts and you know, we, and we just went off and we'll solve this and we'll be brilliant and we forgot to engage.
What in your mind though, is the right holistic process? So what are the different dimensions of the process? Yeah, I think any of the projects that I engage in, you know, at the moment it's always pushing for early [00:29:30] feedback and, um. Even when you haven't got something new. Fully baked. You know, I just feel, uh, like even when you're in an engineering organization, just to flush out bugs, to flush out, you know, other things early, you've got to get into the practice of making something available really quickly, you know, into internal users, into, you know, bring more people into the process.
Just get that feedback because you, you are always going to learn more and more. [00:30:00] And, and I think even if I was to, to say. With traditional engineering, there's, there was a lot of just, just this ability to get that feedback. Well, you know, because you're in this, this deterministic world. I would describe it, you know, where, you know, the, you know, the outputs are always going to be the same, that if you, depending on the inputs, but I think we're moving into this new world, particularly with regenerative ai, where the feedback piece of the problem is an even more important part of it because you don't necessarily know.
What the end [00:30:30] users are going to ask of your new service. You know, it's non-deterministic and it's a, it's a, a challenge for testing in the lab, inverted commas, but it's also a, a, a problem around the guardrails if you've got to continuously bring these things in and try to understand how people are going to use them.
I'll give you an example. It's, and it's not, it's not one. That's one I read about. So there was a, a, a recent. Uh, chatbot, I think it was, I, I, I won't mention the name of the company, but it was a major travel search [00:31:00] website. You can go look it up, you know, and they released a chatbot into the wild. Um. And, uh, of course there's always the, the Wiley, you know, person that will decide to push the envelope on this particular capability.
And they started looking up, you know, uh, instructions for making Molotov cocktails, and it gladly answered, you know, uh, enthusiastically, you know, because they never put in some guardrails. Now, of course, they fixed it pretty quickly, but that's your favorite drink, isn't it, Rob? I was just [00:31:30] thinking though, it's hu it's humans not thinking outside the bounds of where they need to think.That's exactly, yes. Yeah.
Always try their, their look at something. Somebody will always push the envelope and, and, and try to test the boundaries. And you've got to account for that as much as you can. You know, but you, you can't always account for it, but you should be building something into, to at least consider it.
I'd be interested in your view on, sometimes technologists get caught up with building something that maybe isn't the right answer, and then they [00:32:00] have pride. About what they've built. And then it creates resistance on feedback that comes back and goes, it's not working for us, we don't want to use it. And then there's get, you get this sort of butting of heads that the technologists are going, well, we've built something great.
And they go, yeah, but we don't wanna use it 'cause it's rubbish and it doesn't work for us. And then there's, that has to have that feedback loop that says early feedback, conversation. Pivot, pivot, pivot. What's your view on, are technologists getting better at dropping the pride a bit faster and understanding that it has to work for the human or do you think that's still in, in the system a [00:32:30] bit too much?
I think it's still there. I think it manifests in slightly different ways. Like even in a, in a slightly different context, and you know, I'm old enough to kinda see the emergence of, you know, when cloud started to come out, you would, we would've all seen the resistance that was there. Cloud never take off, can't run our organization in cloud.
No, no, no. It has to be all on an on-prem. And so like 5 million reasons for, you know, the why it can't work. And of course over time all of that went away and we started to realize it was [00:33:00] a better experience and we're seeing similar with technologists. Around ai. And it's an interesting one because in some cases, particularly in the development community, some of the new AI tech is a direct threat to software engineers, you know, and their reason to exist in some organizations.
And, uh, and, and so there's that resistance that's emerging. And no, it's, you hear versions of it's code slot and it's this, and it's that, and all the problems. And in lots of cases that's correct, [00:33:30] but it's not always gonna be the case for long. And it's, you know, six months ago it, you know, was, you know, the, the, the code was in a particular place.
Now it's much better and six months from now it'll be better again. And so, you know, it is changing, you know, dramatically. But I think your point about, you know, just being so proud about building something and, you know, the resistance. Absolutely. I think it's, it's there. I think there's two ways of looking at it though.
You can look at it as a challenge. Uh, but you can [00:34:00] also look at it as an opportunity. And, and what I mean by that is there are many organizations I've been in, there's never been a shortage of ideas, you know, whether it's a product, organization or, uh, an e-commerce company or whatever it might be. You know, there's, there's usually somebody in those organizations who have an abundance of ideas from the CEO down and their challenges, they can't deliver on them.
Because the tech, it's too slow to get things into market. It's too slow to try out [00:34:30] ideas, you know, we'll try that thing out because it's in the backlog and we get to it in six months or in a year's time. And you know, we've, all these other things, we tech that and, you know, all of this stuff, you know, reasons for not, not to do these things.
I think there's a new dynamic with the, with the new gen of, you know, or the cogen tools that are coming out where it gives you this ability to actually accelerate a lot of that, accelerate roadmaps, rethink all of that, you know? And you know, it doesn't mean that you're going to do everything, but it [00:35:00] means that you can, you can accelerate the beginning part of a process whereby you don't necessarily have to pick one bet.
You can pick multiple ideas, you can pick multiple experiences. You can try things in a different way, whether it's a new feature, whether it's an entirely new product, there's a different way of coming at the problem. You can start with this abundance of ideas, and you can generate an awful lot of the, you know, the, the, you know, the work for you [00:35:30] to validate and prove those ideas back to the feedback point again.
Mm-hmm. Get the feedback, see what, how people resonate with these things. But it does bring in this other part of it, which is taste, you know, and you know, if you do an abundance of ideas, an abundance of things, that's, that's great. It's a bit like, you know, you can get the new image chat bots if you like, to generate like a thousand images for you.
What, which of them are you actually gonna go with, you know? So it's not a problem of. The creation, the abundance [00:36:00] piece of it. It's, it's a question of, well, which one are you gonna pick and how are you gonna move forward? And so I think there's, there's versions of that in the tech world where we need to move beyond this linear view that we currently have to maybe a more expansive, experimental approach that we can leverage the tech in different ways.[00:36:30]
Do you know the Michelin guide I recently discovered? The tires. It really wasn't meant to rate restaurants, but it started in the 19 hundreds as a way to sell more car tires, encouraging people to drive further and then stop at restaurants along the way. So over time, it completely reshaped the food culture.
Chefs began to change their craft because of a guide that wasn't even designed for them. Mm-hmm. And that actually struck me sometimes the tools we built [00:37:00] to solve one problem end up reshaping entire systems, but in reality, reshaping the way organizations, leaders, and even society works. So I think that is AI and everything that we've been talking about, you know, is this is the biggest impact of new technology.
Will it actually come from what it. Designed for, or will it come with unintended cultural shifts and triggers? What's your take, Kevin? How big is it?
I think it's [00:37:30] enormous. Um, I'm not just saying that because I work in AI right now, but if you think about many of the major could think electricity. It wasn't necessarily the fact that electricity was, you know, this great new capability.
It was the fact that. Factories and cities and entire countries reorganized themselves around how to leverage electricity in an entirely different way to get the benefits and, and, and everything that occurred afterwards. I think the same is the case with, with the new AI technology. Yes, of [00:38:00] course there are benefits.
It's a bit like I was saying, you know, the, the radio, radio or cameras thing. You can use, uh, capabilities to get performance improvements. You can, you know, make cost savings. You can do all of that. Of course you get some, you get some benefits. But we are, um. And just as an aside, there was an interesting MIT report recently that talked about these kind of 95% of AI kind of POCs failed or something.
And you know, everybody gravitated to that [00:38:30] headline, but everybody forgot to do was read the rest of the report, which was the reason why they failed. And the reason why they failed was around the organizational processes and the ability of organizations to learn and to use them in different ways.
Yeah. My other take is that. 90% of those early POCs failed depending on the nature of the measures that were put in place. Mm-hmm. Yep. There wa there was a huge learning cycle that will have, that would, that went on through that period, but everybody gravitated to a [00:39:00] headline to kind of ra Yeah, that's right.You know, kind of throw rocks at ai and, and I think, you know, going back to the, the, the question, you know, like, I spend a lot of time thinking about this in organizations and, you know, there's, there's variations of. Challenges that I get posed, you know, whether it's, you know, we need to introduce a new, uh, conversational interface into our, in, in, into our product or into our, you know, uh, uh, you know, customer into our website or whatever it might be, and.[00:39:30]
That's fantastic. It's a, you know, they're starting to come up with a, with some sort of a new idea, but then they run into the challenges of the way the organizations are constructed between, you know, all the silos. You know, support is not connected to marketing. It's not connected to operations, and so the things that you're now reimagining in your new experience, whereas a customer, I want to ask these questions to the organization, not to a department in the organization.
And, you know, they can't easily be unlocked The way organizations [00:40:00] are are currently set up. And so I feel that there is this, you know, and we see this a. The really good organizations are starting to reimagine the sort of interfaces and experiences that they want to bring out to market for how their company engages with their customer base in, in all, in all areas.
But then that starts to go back into the inner workings of the organization itself, to change all the core [00:40:30] processes, to change the supply chains, to change, you know, just, uh, you know, how they fundamentally think about everything in that organization. And I think this is where the catalyst. Becomes, many of those things are not necessarily going to be about AI per se.
You might be able to leverage, you know, some of that technology, but it will be business processes and automations and all sorts of other ways of reconstruction org design and all the other pieces. So one, one of the things I thought that was interesting about the example that Esme brought in is the, is [00:41:00] this notion of unintended consequence.
So there's an unintended consequence from the Michelin. Tire guide that it actually helped reshape, you know, the high-end restaurant industry. Uh, I mean, that's an absolutely excellent unintended consequence. Perhaps, I think mostly the unintended consequences that come about maybe as, as a result of bad design, perhaps. So I, so I wonder how, how do you guys think about [00:41:30] the unknowable and unintended consequences as part of your design process?
Interesting question. Um, one of the, so to answer it, I, I don't know if there's a perfect answer in the sense, but I'm always one who, many years ago I worked in venture capital and I remember, I, I was Deeply uncomfortable as an engineer going into that environment with the, you know, and, and just if you bear with me [00:42:00] a sec on my, on my analogy, but it was, you know, I'm, I'm coming in, you know, engineering mindsets, you know, very linear, very, you know, specific. And then suddenly I'm in this environment where we're going to invest in a bunch of companies and assume that probably two of them will be successful and most of the rest of them will either fail or be, you know, uh.
You know, not, not, you know, might get our money back, you know, kind of thing. And, and it's like going, how can we be comfortable with this, with this scenario? Not knowing which of the companies are going to be successful. And, and, and so this wise old, [00:42:30] uh, chairman of our firm at the time used to, you know, this, these are my words, but a version of, you go with the flow, you know, so you make five investments and you know, you're spending a day a week with each one perhaps, and it's all fantastic, but at some point, one or two of those start to take off for different reasons.
You don't just gonna sit there and keep. The same amount of time or the same amount of money into all of them. You start going with the flow, you start reacting to that. And I think in same similarly in innovation constructs, if you've got a portfolio of [00:43:00] innovation projects, they're not all going to be successful.
So I think you've got to always have an eye on, you know, that you know something is going to change, something's going to evolve, and that's back to a form of the feedback loop. The same, the same thing, that there might be an unintended consequence, which are. With, with what you've released into the wild, that starts changing something, but you've got to be open to observe it, you know, observe it.
Exactly. You're keeping a, you're keeping an eye on it. You're keep, you're, you're, you're looking at how people are, are reacting to, you know, to, [00:43:30] to, to what's going on. Because you might discover if you're selling products that one product starts to take off, or you start seeing some weird, you know, behavioral stuff that, you know, why are, why are people reacting in this way versus that way or, and so on.
Not, not only being perhaps open to observe it in the first place, but then to actually go, you know what, that's an interesting route because you can't imagine that first Michelin, you know, Michelin brainstorming session where the, where somebody at the front goes like, now look, [00:44:00] bear with me on this. I honestly, there's a good idea here.
We're looking at tire wear, but actually what I think we should do is reinvent the restaurant industry. But they ish at that, right? Check, check out the algorithm so you get search results more tailored to your interests and you get a positive feedback loop on that.
And then the unintended consequence was it created an echo chamber set up and then we lost discourse in society and social media is the same. So it's lovely to think that we would do [00:44:30] that. I just don't think in our human capacity. We do do that enough. The, the idea of let's observe what's actually going on. So when the algorithm was created, we could have picked up the early signs that it's creating this horrible, broken communication that goes on in society now because of technology. But we didn't, we arrived and then turned around and went, oh, that's happened. Oh dear. That's a problem. And I'm not sure how we fix it, but yeah, I, I'd love to think we do it, but I just don't think we do. I'm smiling, Rob because. [00:45:00] Um, I, I recently finished, um, uh, a master's thesis in psychology and it was a big kind of mind shift for me to think very differently about things. But, um. One of the, the areas that I was, I, I was deeply interested in beyond kind of ai, AI and so on, was the, was the idea of how work gets done and hybrid and remote and on-prem type work.
And I, and I did some, did, did some thinking on [00:45:30] that one, but I think it's fascinating as a, as a society that we recognize. Pre COVID, everyone was like, here's why we can't distribute work. We have to be all in offices, we have to do all these things. And you know, society was set up in that way. COVID comes along, rule book gets thrown out.
We suddenly realize actually we can all go and the, you know, distribute ourselves all over the place and. In lots of cases, nothing changed. Performance in some cases went up and, you know, and we had all [00:46:00] these positive benefits and we'd, all these lifestyle benefits and people were starting to, you know, reconnect with their community and, and various other things that, that, that, that were, that were good benefits.
And then somewhere along the line we all decided, now we all have to get back into the office again. Yeah. Bring the rule book back.
That's what we had. Bring the rule book back. And you know, even though, you know, and, and, and just as a, as an aside, some of the stuff that I, you know, kind of uncovered as part of my thesis were, you know, about the, actually.
Massive increases in [00:46:30] performance benefits in hybrid type work environments beyond the on-prem and, and I have so many colleagues and friends that talk about going into offices and sitting in cubes on Zoom calls all day long for people they're not in the office. And it's just like this big waste of time for everyone.
But just on your point that not only did we recognize that we could change something massive, as much as society changed in COVID.
Yeah. But then we just kind of. Ignore it all. And we're going back to this, you know, other [00:47:00] world, you know, it's like going, why, what are we doing? You know, why are we not embracing it more?
And I, and I think just things like ai, we're going to go through those cycles as, as well, where the, you know, the, what was it? Gartner called the trough of disillusionment or something. You know, we will be going through those where it, like the MIT story, you know, uh, all the failures and all the things, but.
There is huge potential in this technology, but it's, it's not just confined to the tech itself. It's confined to how we rethink [00:47:30] organizations and many aspects of society. And, and we will get so many things wrong. And we get other things right. And you know, the, the key thing is to keep an eye on it and observe and continue to just,
it's interesting you bring up the trough of disillusionment 'cause that's what everybody refers to, Dave's dinner parties as.
You got in there before me. You are going. I could see on your face. You had a joke about me and that. So I got in there first. You know what I was gonna do, don't you? It was the, uh, it was no [00:48:00] longer having to go to the post office. I was gonna bring us full circle on that. I had a crack lined up and you got, so I'm glad I teed that one up for you. Yeah, that was brilliant. Thank you very much. I got there first. That's chalk one onto the Kearney board against that. All right.
On that note, then we'll end today's conversation. But Kevin, thank you so much for spending a bit of time with us and sharing your insights. It's been a good, good conversation today. No problem. I could keep talking about this stuff for hours, so Absolutely. It's, it's hard to know when to stop. There's, there's about [00:48:30] three of the podcasts just in the, in your end answer there. Uh, but maybe we'll return to that at some day in the future. But before we let you go. We end every episode of this podcast by asking our guests what they're excited about doing next.
Now that could be you've got a great restaurant booked at the weekend, or it could be something in your professional life, or it could be a bit of both. So Kevin, what are you excited about doing next?
Well, immediately next we decided as a family we are going to do some city breaks around around Europe. So a few weeks ago Oh, lovely. We did. We did a weekend in Berlin. [00:49:00] It was amazing. And so very flat, easy to walk around or cycle around. Yeah, fantastic city and uh. Flying to Brussels this afternoon too, 'cause I've never been there. So wanna go and see what that's like? Um, so isn't that a wonderful thing? Yeah.
Like when you, every now and again, you're like, why do we, like, we're, uh, an hour and a half away from many amazing cities. And you, so you just don't often, apart from marce who likes to drive on many thousands of [00:49:30] miles round around the arc of triumph, round around the arc of triumph. Yeah. Uh, we, you just don't, you just don't think about it on a day-to-day basis.
Even within the UK it's like, you could do a weekend at Oxford, you know, that kind of thing. Yep.
So that's on the personal level and professionally, it's just really deeply engaging with all of the new emerging tech that's, that's, that's coming out. You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's reenergized me personally as a, as a technologist, you know, to get close to, you know, the, the opportunity and the potential of, [00:50:00] of, you know, I, I just look at it as.
A way of all the ideas that were locked away in my brain that weren't going anywhere. I now have, you know, the, the mechanism to realize a lot of that, you know, professionally. So that's, that's incredibly exciting. On that note, uh, there's a rash assumption here, so shut me down if it's, uh, the wrong assumption.
But I'm kind of assuming that some of that may have triggered your interest in doing the psychology masters that you've just done. I wonder, just very briefly, what was your connective tissue to that?
I [00:50:30] wanted to do something a little bit different, but I had put my hat on, you know, it was like two years of a, of a process that, um, it's all ultimately about the people.
About teams? Oh yeah, about customers, about stakeholders, and, and I'd like to be able to claim that, you know, the, you know, the I part of our, uh, ai, you know, the intelligence part was part of my master plan, but I actually hadn't been factoring that in. But, you know, over the last two years, it's become incredibly useful just to have those [00:51:00] insights and.
From an entirely different discipline that I'd never, that I'd never studied before, just to really understand that psychology of how the mind works and how our brain works, and how we as humans interact with each other and as individuals. So it was just a fascinating experience. Well worth it if anybody's interested.
The fact it's all about the human, never as a truer word been said. Totally spot on. Spot on. If you would like to discuss any of the issues on this week's show and how they might impact you and your business, [00:51:30] please get in touch with us at [e-mail], roll on LinkedIn and on Substack.
We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to connect in DM if you have questions for the show to tackle. And of course, please read and subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us improve the show. A huge thanks to Kevin, our sound and editing visits, Ben and Louis, our producer Muscle, and of course to all our listeners.
See you in another reality next [00:52:30] week.