Digital design technology waits on no one. It’s forever changing, and web designers are forever having to seek ways to keep up with it. If there are any “evergreen” tools and resources that keep pace with the latest trends they are few. Except for upgrades and updates, of course.
The latest tools, apps, and resources can cope with the latest design trends. They are not difficult to come by. There is, in fact, an embarrassment of riches. So many that finding the right ones can actually be a challenge in itself.
Not all of them are top-of-the-line of course, and the best of the bunch is what you want and deserve. To help you out, we’ve put in place this nice little collection of top tools, apps, and resources. They’ll individually or collectively make your job easier. They help you keep up with the times and maintain a competitive edge.
When executives at tech giants Salesforce and Microsoft decided in fall 2017 to turn to an online education platform to help train potential users of products for their vendors, they turned to Pierre Dubuc and his team in fall 2017.
Two years later, Dubuc’s company, OpenClassrooms, has closed deals with both of them. Salesforce has worked with OpenClassrooms to create and offer a developer-training course to help people learn how to use the Salesforce platform. In a similar vein, Microsoft will use the OpenClassrooms platform for a six-month course in artificial intelligence. If students complete the AI program, they are guaranteed a job within six months or get their money back. They also earn masters-level diploma accredited in Europe.
So what are the design trends set to dominate in 2019? The team from Venngage have put together this infographic which outlines their data-backed predictions for what’s coming, and where you should be looking in your process.
Definitely, these trends look like standing out – you can read Venngage’s full report here or check out the graphic below.
[On 9/24/18], I released the Top Tools for Learning 2018 , which I compiled from the results of the 12th Annual Digital Learning Tools Survey.
I have also categorised the tools into 30 different areas, and produced 3 sub-lists that provide some context to how the tools are being used:
Top 100 Tools for Personal & Professional Learning 2018 (PPL100): the digital tools used by individuals for their own self-improvement, learning and development – both inside and outside the workplace.
Top 100 Tools for Workplace Learning (WPL100): the digital tools used to design, deliver, enable and/or support learning in the workplace.
Top 100 Tools for Education (EDU100): the digital tools used by educators and students in schools, colleges, universities, adult education etc.
3 – Web courses are increasing in popularity. Although Coursera is still the most popular web course platform, there are, in fact, now 12 web course platforms on the list. New additions this year include Udacity and Highbrow (the latter provides daily micro-lessons). It is clear that people like these platforms because they can chose what they want to study as well as how they want to study, ie. they can dip in and out if they want to and no-one is going to tell them off – which is unlike most corporate online courses which have a prescribed path through them and their use is heavily monitored.
5 – Learning at work is becoming personal and continuous. The most significant feature of the list this year is the huge leap up the list that Degreed has made – up 86 places to 47th place – the biggest increase by any tool this year. Degreed is a lifelong learning platform and provides the opportunity for individuals to own their expertise and development through a continuous learning approach. And, interestingly, Degreed appears both on the PPL100 (at 30) and WPL100 (at 52). This suggests that some organisations are beginning to see the importance of personal, continuous learning at work. Indeed, another platform that underpins this, has also moved up the list significantly this year, too. Anders Pink is a smart curation platform available for both individuals and teams which delivers daily curated resources on specified topics. Non-traditional learning platforms are therefore coming to the forefront, as the next point further shows.
From DSC: Perhaps some foreshadowing of the presence of a powerful, online-based, next generation learning platform…?
Microsoft has developed an AI-powered web design tool capable of turning sketches of websites into functional HTML code.
Called Sketch2Code, Microsoft AI’s senior product manager Tara Shankar Jana explained that the tool aims to “empower every developer and every organisation to do more with AI”. It was born out of the “intrinsic” problem of sending a picture of a wireframe or app designs from whiteboard or paper to a designer to create HTML prototypes.
1. Hook your learners in
2. Use radio techniques to engage with sound
3. Illuminate your ideas with imagery
4. Put your ideas into context using demonstrations, examples, cases and stories
5. Take advantage of the fact you’re live – get interactive
If you’re not going to interact with your audience, there’s absolutely no point in running a live session. If you want to present a large body of content, why not do this in advance in text, as a video or a podcast? Reserve a live session for things you cannot do any other way. Virtual classrooms provide lots of possibilities for interactivity, so use them constantly.
The Future of Design, Part II— from 99u.adobe.com by Madeleine Morley; with thanks to Keesa V. Johnson for posting this on Twitter For the second straight year, we asked 10 creatives to predict what is coming up in the world of design and how they will prepare for it. This year’s installment includes designing for voice-controlled tech, holograms, and the rise of the hybrid designer.
Design is always changing, and wider changes are often spearheaded by design itself. Now with tech and the creative industry increasingly aligning, we’re on the precipice of a truly momentous period in the history of design, something unprecedented that is difficult to predict and prepare for.
Excerpts:
With quickly evolving tools, tumultuous shifts in the economy, the relentless growth of the gig and freelance lifestyle, and global networks, the working landscape for young designers is a tremendously uncertain one. There’s no model to follow: The known and well-trodden career path of previous generations is overgrown.
…
It’s an uncertain time for design, but in its difficulty and complexity, it is an inspiring and crucial one: Those with the skills will help decide the way that innovations in tech not only look but function, too, and influence our daily lives.
Although we can’t predict the future, we can speak to those with experience who think about what’s in store. We asked each participant to give us their advice: What does their future of design look like? What will it do to the very idea of design. And how can we prepare for it?
Design will be for ears and not eyes.
We’re always getting our heads around designing for the latest technology, methodology, application, media, or format. It’s a fascinating time to be a designer. There will always be space for experts, for those who specialize in the things they are really, really good at, but for others there is the need to diversify.
Tech is king: Jobs with the top growth potential are tech-focused, with demand coming from tech and non-tech companies alike. Machine learning engineer, data scientist, and big data engineers rank among the top emerging jobs — with companies in a wide range of industries seeking those skills.
Soft skills matter: Not all of the emerging tech jobs require technical skills. Sales development representative, customer success manager, and brand partner rank among the top emerging jobs at companies where a technical background is not a necessity. Traditional soft skills like communication and management underpin all of these emerging jobs.
Jobs with high mobility on the rise: Several top emerging jobs reflect broader societal trends, such as wellness, flexibility and location mobility. More people are getting healthy which could explain why barre instructor featured among our emerging jobs. Not quite as surprising, licensed realtors ranked highly as the post-Great Recession recovery of the real estate market rolls forward. Just in the past year, the number of licensed realtors has surged 40 percent. These type of roles tend to be more widely distributed across U.S. regions.
Low supply of talent for top jobs: Data scientist roles have grown over 650 percent since 2012, but currently 35,000 people in the US have data science skills, while hundreds of companies are hiring for those roles – even those you may not expect in sectors like retail and finance – supply of candidates for these roles cannot keep up with demand.
Future-proofing skills is critical: Some of these emerging skills didn’t even exist five years ago, and many professionals are not confident their current skill set will be relevant within the next 1-2 years.
Software engineers are feeding into nearly all of these emerging jobs.
Even further, it’s estimated that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately hold jobs that don’t yet exist.
Future-proofing skills is critical: Some of these emerging skills didn’t even exist five years ago, and many professionals are not confident their current skill set will be relevant within the next 1-2 years.
The Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017 (11th Annual Survey) has been compiled by Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies from the votes of 2,174 learning professionals worldwide, together with 3 sub-lists
Top 100 Tools for Personal & Professional Learning (PPL)
66 tools moved up the list. Top 3 risers are Unsplash (up 71 places), Grammarly (up 70 places) and Snapchat (up 64 places
Messaging apps and team tools are particularly on the rise: Slack is now up 8 places to #12, Trello is up 21 places to #22, Microsoft Teams is another new tool in at #79
52 NEW tools appear on the list this year – the highest entry is Typeform in at #55.
2 interesting new tools for augmented and virtual reality join the list – Aurasma, ENTiTi – as well as a chatbot system – Ultra Hal Assistant.
Some observations on what the Top Tools list tells us personal and professional learning As in previous years, individuals continue to using a wide variety of:
networks, services and platforms for professional networking, communication and collaboration
web resources and courses for self-improvement and self-development
tools for personal productivity
All of which shows that many individuals have become highly independent, continuous modern professional learners – making their own decisions about what they need to learn and how to do it.
Adobe is killing Flash, the software that millions used in the early 2000s to play web games and watch video in their web browsers.
The company announced the software was “end-of-life” in a blog post on Tuesday. From the blog post:
“Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners – including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla – Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.”
From DSC and Adobe — for faculty members and teachers out there:
Do your students an enormous favor by assigning them a digital communications project. Such a project could include images, infographics, illustrations, animations, videos, websites, blogs (with RSS feeds), podcasts, videocasts, mobile apps and more. Such outlets offer powerful means of communicating and demonstrating knowledge of a particular topic.
As Adobe mentions, when you teach your students how to create these types of media projects, you prepare them to be flexible and effective digital communicators. I would also add that these new forms and tools can be highly engaging, while at the same time, they can foster students’ creativity. Building new media literacy skills will pay off big time for your students. It will land them jobs. It will help them communicate to a global audience. Students can build upon these skills to powerfully communicate numerous kinds of messages in the future. They can be their own radio station. They can be their own TV station.
Some conference participants were concerned that this beleaguered region might grow. In fact, one attendee — an old friend who strategizes about technology for a big New York bank — commented that perhaps Wall Street would become “the new Rust Belt.” His concern was that automation of the finance industry would hollow out jobs in that field in the same way that robotics and other technologies have reduced manufacturing employment.
This is a sobering prospect, but there is plenty of evidence that it’s a real possibility. Key aspects of the finance industry have already been automated to a substantial degree. Jobs in the New York finance field have been declining for several years. According to data from research firm Coalition Ltd., more than 10,000 “front-office producer” jobs have been lost within the top 10 banks since 2011. Coalition also suggests that global fixed-income headcount has fallen 31% since 2011.
According to a new report, organizations are moving away from hierarchies, focusing on improving the employee experience, redesigning training, and reinventing the role of HR.
Business and HR leaders should rethink almost all of their management and HR practices as the proliferation of digital technologies transform the way organizations work, according to predictions for 2017 from Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
This year’s report includes 11 predictions about rapid technological, structural, and cultural changes that will reshape the world of work, including management, HR, and the markets for HR and workplace technology.
Artificial intelligence has a big year ahead — from cnet.com by Stepehn Shankland In 2017, AI won’t just be for the nerdy companies. Machine learning can help with mortgage applications and bridge safety, too.
Excerpt:
Get ready for AI to show up where you’d least expect it.
In 2016, tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft launched dozens of products and services powered by artificial intelligence. Next year will be all about the rest of the business world embracing AI.
Artificial intelligence is a 60-year-old term, and its promise has long seemed like it was forever over the horizon. But new hardware, software, services and expertise means it’s finally real — even though companies will still need plenty of human brain power to get it working.
AI was one of the hottest trends in tech this year, and it’s only poised to get bigger. You’ve already brushed up against AI: It screens out spam, organizes your digital photos and transcribes your spoken text messages. In 2017, it will spread beyond digital doodads to mainstream businesses.
The design world has seen its own changes and updates as well. And as we know, change is the only constant. We’ve asked some of the top creatives to share what 2017 design trends they think will be headed our way.
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The market has evolved from technologists looking to learn and understand new big data technologies to customers who want to learn about new projects, new companies and most importantly, how organizations are actually benefitting from the technology. According to John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies, Inc., the acceleration in big data deployments has shifted the focus to the value of the data. John has crystallized his view of market trends into these six major predictions for 2017…
2016 was a rich year for medical technology. Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality. Smart algorithms analysing wearable data. Amazing technologies arrived in our lives and on the market almost every day. And it will not stop in the coming year. The role of a futurist is certainly not making bold predictions about the future. No such big bet has taken humanity forward. Instead, our job is constantly analysing the trends shaping the future and trying to build bridges between them and what we have today. Still, people expect me to come up with predictions about medical technologies every year, and thus here they are.
Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous “new big thing,” big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.
The hottest segment of the hottest trend—artificial intelligence—is the market for chatbots. “The movement towards conversational interfaces will accelerate,” says Stuart Frankel, CEO, Narrative Science. “The recent, combined efforts of a number of innovative tech giants point to a coming year when interacting with technology through conversation becomes the norm. Are conversational interfaces really a big deal? They’re game-changing. Since the advent of computers, we have been forced to speak the language of computers in order to communicate with them and now we’re teaching them to communicate in our language.”
Google changed the world with its PageRank algorithm, creating a new kind of internet search engine that could instantly sift through the world’s online information and, in many cases, show us just what we wanted to see. But that was a long time ago. As the volume of online documents continues to increase, we need still newer ways of finding what we want.
That’s why Google is now running its search engine with help from machine learning, augmenting its predetermined search rules with deep neural networks that can learn to identify the best search results by analyzing vast amounts of existing search data. And it’s not just Google. Microsoft is pushing its Bing search engine in the same direction, and so are others beyond the biggest names in tech.
3 Forces Shaping Ed Tech in 2017— from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Ovum’s latest report examines the key trends that are expected to impact higher education in the new year.
Excerpts:
Institutions Will Support the Use of More Innovative Tech in Teaching and Learning
Schools Will Leverage Technology for Improving the Student Experience
The Next-Generation IT Strategy Will Focus More on IT Agility
We’ve seen a lot of exciting new innovations take place over the course of 2016. This year has introduced interesting new uses for virtual reality—like using VR to help burn victims in hospitals mentally escape from the pain during procedures—and even saw the world’s first revolutionary augmented reality game in the form of Pokémon Go. The iPhone 7 was also introduced, leaving millions of people uncertain of their feelings regarding Apple, while Samsung loyalists just prayed that their smartphones would stay in one piece.
Undoubtedly, there have been quite a few ups and downs in technology over the past year. With any luck, 2017 will provide us with even more new innovations and advancements in tech. But what exactly do we have to look forward to? TMC recently caught up with Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile, to discuss his thoughts on 2016 and his predictions for what’s to come in the future. You can find the entire exchange below.
2016 is fast drawing to a close. And while many will be glad to see the back of it, for those of us who work and play with Virtual Reality, it has been a most exciting year. By the time the bells ring out signalling the start of a new year, the total number of VR users will exceed 43 million. This is a market on the move, projected to be worth $30bn by 2020. If it’s to meet that valuation, then we believe 2017 will be an incredibly important year in the lifecycle of VR hardware and software development. VR will be enjoyed by an increasingly mainstream audience very soon, and here we take a quick look at some of the trends we expect to develop over the next 12 months for that to happen.
Every December, we take a look back at big ideas from the past twelve months that promise to gain momentum in the new year. With more than eleven thousand projects launched between our Design and Tech categories in 2016, we have a nice sample to draw from. More importantly, we have a community of forward-thinking backers who help creators figure out which versions of the future to pursue. Here are some of the emerging trends we expect to see more of in 2017.
Everyday artificial intelligence
Whether chatting with a device as if it’s a virtual assistant strikes you as a sci-fi dream come true or a dystopian nightmare, we’re going to see an increasing number of products that use voice-controlled artificial intelligence interfaces to fit into users’ lives more seamlessly. Among the projects leading the way in this arena are Vi, wireless earphones that double as a personal trainer; Bonjour, an alarm clock that wakes you up with a personalized daily briefing; and Dashbot, a talking car accessory that recalls Kit, David Hasselhoff’s buddy from Knight Rider. One of the factors driving this talking AI boom is the emergence of platforms like Microsoft’s Cognitive Service, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Speech API, which allow product developers to focus on user experience rather than low-level speech processing. For the DIY set, Seeed’s ReSpeaker offers a turnkey devkit for working with these services, and we’ll surely see more tools for integrating AI voice interfaces into all manner of products.
During Microsoft’s Build Conference earlier this year, CEO Satya Nadella delivered the three-hour keynote address, in which he highlighted his belief that the future of technology lies in human language. In this new wave of technology, conversation is the new interface, and “bots are the new apps.” While not as flashy as virtual reality nor as immediately practical as 3D printing, chatbots are nevertheless gaining major traction this year, with support coming from across the entire tech industry. The big tech enterprises are all entering the chatbot space, and many startups are too.
Out with the apps, in with the chatbots. The reason for the attention is simple: The power of the natural language processor, software that processes and parses human language, creating a simple and universal means of interacting with technology.
Developments in computing are driving the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. In this interview Justine Cassell, Associate Dean, Technology, Strategy and Impact, at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and co-chair of the Global Future Council on Computing, says we must ensure that these developments benefit all society, not just the wealthy or those participating in the “new economy”.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important development and consumers globally will see it playing a much more prominent role — both in society and at work — next year, a new report said on Tuesday. Ericsson ConsumerLab, in its annual trend report titled “The 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond”, said that 35 percent of advanced internet users want an AI advisor at work and one in four would like AI as their manager.At the same time, almost half of the respondents were concerned that AI robots will soon make a lot of people lose their jobs.
From driverless cars to robotic workers, the future is going to be here before you know it. Many emerging technologies you hear about today will reach a tipping point by 2025, according to a report from The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society. The council surveyed more than 800 executives and experts from the technology sector to share their respective timelines for when technologies would become mainstream. From the survey results, the council identified 21 defining moments, all of which they predict will occur by 2030. Here’s a look at the technological shifts you can expect during the next 14 years.
… The first robotic pharmacist will arrive in the US 2021.
A new year is quickly approaching and Microsoft Research is offering a glimpse at what the tech scene has in store for 2017 along with some hints at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant’s own priorities for the coming year. This year, the company gathered prominent women researchers to share their thoughts on what to expect next year. Surprising nobody’s who’s been following Microsoft’s software and cloud computing strategy of late, the company is betting big on artificial intelligence (AI).
It’s still early days for the Internet of Things. As recently as 2014, 87 percent of consumers had never heard of the technology, according to Accenture. In 2016, and 19% of business and government professionals reported that they had never heard of the Internet of Things while 18% were only vaguely familiar with it, according to research from the Internet of Things Institute. Although the technology is getting the most traction in the industrial space, the most promising use cases for the technology are just starting to come to light. To get a sense of what to expect as we head into 2017, we spoke with Stanford lecturer and IoT author Timothy Chou, Ph.D.; Thulium.co CEO Tamara McCleary; industry observer and influencer Evan Kirstel; and Sandy Carter, CEO and founder of Silicon-Blitz.
15 tech trends in autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for 2017 — from venturebeat.com by John Brandon Tech is about to change dramatically next year. Want to stay up to date? These predictions from the famed design firm frog spell things out for you. In each section, a designer explains all of the details. Which one is already on your radar?
From DSC:
The articles below demonstrate why the need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!
U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities — from pewinternet.org by Cary Funk, Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Podrebarac Sciupac Americans are more worried than enthusiastic about using gene editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood to change human capabilities
Human Enhancement— from pewinternet.org by David Masci The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Striving for Perfection
The report is far more sedate. It is a draft report, not a bill, with a mixed bag of recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics in the European Parliament. It will be years before anything is decided.
Nevertheless, it is interesting reading when considering how society should adapt to increasingly capable autonomous machines: what should the legal and moral status of robots be? How do we distribute responsibility?
A remarkable opening
The report begins its general principles with an eyebrow-raising paragraph:
whereas, until such time, if ever, that robots become or are made self-aware, Asimov’s Laws must be regarded as being directed at the designers, producers and operators of robots, since those laws cannot be converted into machine code;
It is remarkable because first it alludes to self-aware robots, presumably moral agents – a pretty extreme and currently distant possibility – then brings up Isaac Asimov’s famous but fictional laws of robotics and makes a simultaneously insightful and wrong-headed claim.
That murmur is self-doubt, and its presence helps keep us alive. But robots don’t have this instinct—just look at the DARPA Robotics Challenge. But for robots and drones to exist in the real world, they need to realize their limits. We can’t have a robot flailing around in the darkness, or trying to bust through walls. In a new paper, researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working on giving robots introspection, or a sense of self-doubt. By predicting the likelihood of their own failure through artificial intelligence, robots could become a lot more thoughtful, and safer as well.
If you met this lab-created critter over your beach vacation, you’d swear you saw a baby ray. In fact, the tiny, flexible swimmer is the product of a team of diverse scientists. They have built the most successful artificial animal yet. This disruptive technology opens the door much wider for lifelike robots and artificial intelligence.
From DSC: I don’t think I’d use the term disruptive here — though that may turn out to be the case. The word disruptive doesn’t come close to carrying/relaying the weight and seriousness of this kind of activity; nor does it point out where this kind of thing could lead to.
Todd Richmond, a director at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, says a big debate is brewing over who controls digital assets associated with real world property.
“This is the problem with technology adoption — we don’t have time to slowly dip our toe in the water,” he says. “Tenants have had no say, no input, and now they’re part of it.”
From DSC: I greatly appreciate what Pokémon Go has been able to achieve and although I haven’t played it, I think it’s great (great for AR, great for peoples’ health, great for the future of play, etc.)! So there are many positives to it. But the highlighted portion above is not something we want to have to say occurred with artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, some types of genetic engineering, corporations tracking/using your personal medical information or data, the development of biased algorithms, etc.
The links I have included in this column have been carefully chosen as recommended reading to support my firm conviction that machine learning and artificial intelligence are the keys to just about every aspect of life in the very near future: every sector, every business.
Now there is an A.I. that can do your job. Customers can direct exactly how their new website should look. Fancy something more colorful? You got it. Less quirky and more professional? Done. This A.I. is still in a limited beta but it is coming. It’s called The Grid and it came out of nowhere. It makes you feel like you are interacting with a human counterpart. And it works.
Artificial intelligence has arrived. Time to sharpen up those resumes.
It seems like, in general, technology always races ahead of the moral implications of using it. This seems to be true of everything from atomic power to sequencing genomes. Scientists often create something because they can, because there is a perceived need for it, or even by accident as a result of research. Only then does the public catch up and start to form an opinion on the issue.
…
Which brings us to the science of augmenting humans with technology, a process that has so far escaped the public scrutiny and opposition found with other radical sciences. Scientists are not taking any chances, with several yearly conferences already in place as a forum for scientists, futurists and others to discuss the process of human augmentation and the moral implications of the new science.
That said, it seems like those who would normally oppose something like this have remained largely silent.
Google Created Its Own Laws of Robotics — from fastcodesign.com by John Brownlee Building robots that don’t harm humans is an incredibly complex challenge. Here are the rules guiding design at Google.
Today, though, I’m turning the focus back to those books on the shelves of your classroom libraries, as I share seven children’s titles that you might want to add to your bookshelves!
Creating high-quality online courses is getting increasingly complex—requiring an ever-growing set of skills. Faculty members can’t do it all, nor can instructional designers, nor can anyone else. As time goes by, new entrants and alternatives to traditional institutions of higher education will likely continue to appear on the higher education landscape—the ability to compete will be key.
…
For example, will there be a need for the following team members in your not-too-distant future?
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Specialists: those with knowledge of how to leverage Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) in order to create fun and engaging learning experiences (while still meeting the learning objectives)
