Tag Archives: Communications

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Work

Email Composer: Persona Point of View (POV) Reviews

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First, there was Spell Check, next Thesaurus, Synonyms, contextual grammar suggestions, and now Persona, Point of View Reviews. Between the immensely accurate and omnipresent #Grammarly and #Google’s #Gmail Predictive Text, I starting thinking about the next step in the AI and Human partnership on crafting communications.

Google Gmail Predictive Text

Google gMail predictive text had me thinking about AI possibilities within an email, and it occurred to me, I understand what I’m trying to communicate to my email recipients but do I really know how my message is being interpreted?

Google gMail has this eerily accurate auto suggestive capability, as you type out your email sentence gMail suggests the next word or words that you plan on typing. As you type auto suggestive sentence fragments appear to the right of the cursor. It’s like reading your mind. The most common word or words that are predicted to come next in the composer’s eMail.

Personas

In the software development world, it’s a categorization or grouping of people that may play a similar role, behave in a consistent fashion. For example, we may have a lifecycle of parking meters, where the primary goal is the collection of parking fees. In this case, personas may include “meter attendant”, and “the consumer”. These two personas have different goals, and how they behave can be categorized. There are many such roles within and outside a business context.

In many software development tools that enable people to collect and track user stories or requirements, the tools also allow you to define and correlate personas with user stories.

As in the case of email composition, once the email has been written, the composer may choose to select a category of people they would like to “view from their perspective”. Can the email application define categories of recipients, and then preview these emails from their perspective viewpoints?

What will the selected persona derive from the words arranged in a particular order? What meaning will they attribute to the email?

Use Personas in the formulation of user stories/requirements; understand how Personas will react to “the system”, and changes to the system.

Finally the use of the [email composer] solution based on “actors” or “personas”. What personas’ are “out of the box”? What personas will need to be derived by the email composer’s setup of these categories of people? Wizard-based Persona definitions?

There are already software development tools like Azure DevOps (ADO), which empower teams to manage product backlogs and correlate “User Stories”, or “Product Backlog Items” with Personas. These are static personas, that are completely user-defined, and no intelligence to correlate “user stories” with personas”. Users of ADO must create these links.

Now, technology can assist us to consider the intended audience, a systematic, biased perspective using Artificial Intelligence to inspect your email based on selected “point of view” (a Persons) of the intended email. Maybe your email will be misconstrued as abrasive, and not the intended response.

Business, Mobility, Technology

Where is My .fon Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD)? .tel doesn’t cut it.

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Every phone number in the world should have an IP address and a domain name associated with it, hence the gTLD proposal for .fon for every phone number.  Things like us.emergency.fon = 911 would be possible.   In addition, a group of cloud vendors would be awarded management of sections of these domains, which may be aligned to the phone number carrier, or if they don’t have the capability, they can ‘sell’ or ‘lease’ out the resource to a third party Internet Provider and Cloud Vendor, similar to the way we sell mortgages, or the mortgage companies sell off our mortgage.

Not only would the service of management of the domain name correlated to an IP address and a phone number, but each IP would have a virtual image managed in the cloud, which could provide to the consumer, cloud storage for storing public and private documents, as well as a ‘home page’, cloud computing cycles for the consumers public and private applications, as well as enabling the services: VoIP, text and email messaging.

These services may be provided free for some basic subset, and the extended subset would charge the customer, e.g. for additional cloud storage space.  In addition, the client may choose to move their service to another provider.  A public index.html home page, and a private index.html home page could be created, so a person may design their own portal, e.g. containing widgets, frequently used numbers, news widgets, etc.  These pages scale downward to a mobile device or up to a high resolution image, e.g. addressable HD television.

Business, Education, Technology

Legos, and Improved Team Communication

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Awesome Lego Builds

The article, although off topic,  sparked an excellent experience in interactive connunications, requiring people to build to a specification using a phone and the use of Legos.  I performed a similar exercise in two executive classes.  We needed to describe how to build a small set of lego instructions by describing each step only.  Showings the instruction picture was not an option.   It was a test in how people are able to best describe and follow instructions,  an exercise in communications for both sides.  In these exercises,  they were both native English speakers, and almost all adhoc teams were not able to complete the objects as the final project specified.

This communications tool can be used as an icebreaker, with established teams to see how well they work together as well as adhoc teams.  Of course,  the exercise has condensed time requirements,  and may be performed in either same or mixed language teams.

In today’s world of 3D model printing specifics, the human interactions seem to be less important.  We are removing the human factor of communications which may result in the diminished ability for cross culture interactions and problem solving resolutions,  sociologically speaking.  Ultimately, this will break down our ability to interact, and we as a species, may become more xenophobic.  Drastic, maybe.  Is may be an opportunity for governmentk leaders, and world peace.  Maybe at the next United Nations summit?  🙂

This may also be an opportunity for AI learning language engines for inductive predictive communications and a project to enhanceme Google Glass language translation as per previous posts

Business, Technology

Ride the Near Field Communications Wave

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At the 2013 Computer Electronics Show, there were only a few vendors touting Near Field Communications (NFC) technology integrated into their products, that I could see, and I did try to get to as many booths as possible.  Last week I mentioned people in Korea use NFC business cards to exchange and play music on their devices.  After that post, I did see a company’s tweet saying they were going to get into the distribution of NFC cards to store music, movies, and more, as the advertisement stated.  The benefits of this technology over Bluetooth simply low / near null power signature, inexpensive relative to the Bluetooth technology, and the potential shortcoming is it has a very short range.  Smartphones equipped with NFC can be paired with NFC tags or stickers which can be programmed by NFC apps to automate tasks.   NFC always involves an initiator and a target; the initiator actively generates an RF field that can power a passive target. This enables NFC targets to take very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require batteries. NFC peer-to-peer communication is possible, provided both devices are powered. NFC tags contain data and are typically read-only, but may be rewriteable.  I also had a conversation with someone that implied the storage on the NFC tags may be limited, so an easy workaround would be to store unique keys, such as a reverse domain name, and other pointers to data in a structured storage data web cloud, which is hosted by any number of verticals.

In this post I wanted to highlight a few potential uses.  Unfortunately, this is the second time I am writing the blog post because the first one didn’t get saved.  Annoying!

Automobile Servicing

Instead of the sticker a car dealer, or your mechanic, may put in the top left hand corner of your window to remind you to change your oil at N miles or Z months, an NFC sticker can be encrypted with your car’s VIN number, the complete required and suggested maintenance for the vehicle, as well as when and by who these services were completed.  The NFC Sticker may be placed in the console where you might place your smartphone.

Food Storage, Food Savings

On your refrigerator, you may place an NFC Sticker, that is overlaid on a magnet.  Every time food is removed or placed in a refrigerator or pantry, you can swipe the food NFC tagged with the cooperation of the food manufacturer.  An average usage model can be derived and encoded on the tag, as well as a proximity timer.  If the food item, such as milk, is not returned to refregerator within a given period of time, a notification on your smartphone, and/or a depreciation counter can be reprogrammed on the NFC tag to indicate approximate usage.  Once the item needs to be restocked, or placed back, a notification may appear on your smartphone, and/or added to your shopping list.

Books, Music, and Movie Samplings from a Store

If you’re in a store, and pass by a book, music CD or movie DVD, an NFC tag may contain a URL to download a PDF sample of the book, a music track from the CD, only available in stores through use of the NFC tag, or bonus material from a movie that only can be accessed through the NFC tag in stores to drive traffic into a store.  I specified a URL to link to the content because the current specification seems to limit the amount of storage on the NFC tag, however, specs can change, and I might be a bit conservative on the amount of storage necessary, but with a ‘secure cloud’, the storage shouldn’t be a factor. Any information on the NFC tag can simply be pointers to unique keys to data in tables within the cloud, such as a VIN number, or other generated unique keys.

Accessory Matching

Imagine your in a store by yourself, and trying on an article of clothing, if the dress, pants or skirt contains an NFC tag, you can touch it with your smartphone, which links you to either advisors or AI,  perhaps sponsored by a fashion magazine, that may provide you with with ideas to match that article of clothing, such as complementary accessories.  This could be accomplished through a video camera, front facing camera, perhaps ads float across the bottom of the screen, and/or it could be a subscription service.

 Meeting People / Dating

If you find yourself in a crowed bar, or party, and want to exchange information with someone you just met,  you have an NFC tag or sticker placed on the back of your hand, or on your purse, when bumped, will automatically exchange a brief bio, picture, likes, interests, and an email address.  If your smartphone is GPS compatible, the data is loaded onto your smartphone with the captured NFC tag data in addition to the location, so you never ask, so where did I meet this guy again?

Supply Chain Management and Shortages

Every person in the supply chain from manufacturer to retailers may have an NFC tag embedded within their employee identification tag, and as each individual handles the product or package, they swipe their card to the other NFC tag, and their employee unique identifier, along with date time and location (optional) may be rewrite the tag to append the new information.  This may prevent product shortages, as well as help further optimize the supply chain.