Everyday UX and Product Inspirations

Machine learning to the employment has been a topic in debate.  Darrell West, in his paper titled " What happens if robots take the jobs? The impact of emerging technologies on employment and public policy” suggested a list of actions government should take to ensure people whose job has been replaced by machines can live a decent live. The general sentiment seems to suggest a turbulent era as work force transform. Growing up in China during the time of State owned enterprise reform, I had real experience living through the time of large group of people being laid off because the jobs were suddenly gone.  My parent’s generation had to learn new skills for a completely new industry at their 40s and 50s. Few of them made it and even became millionaire, many of them didn’t and the family suffered a lot. I followed the news of Detroit Car manufacturing industry lapse and it shows familiar traits. The fact is, jobs come and go...

Sales activities in many organizations are manual and inefficient. Sales went into the first call or meeting with little knowledge of the client or why the client contacted them in the first place. Their pitches are not relevant so they lose the client’s attention quickly.  Machine learning can help sales in 3 ways:   Improve Lead Quality One of the most direct and rewarding way sales team can leverage on data is lead optimization. CRM systems provides advanced lead scoring functionalities which rates a prospect on their action (if it is a Saas business, how they interact on the company website and if a manual sales process, how consumers react); background data (e.g. company size; revenue; consumer demographics) and many other factors.  Per Harald Borgen in his article “ Boosting Sales With Machine Learning ” explain how they use natural language processing to qualify leads. It uses FullContact API to read description of milli...

The AXA advertisements "Born to Protect" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXpoO_tMSSQ)  about how it was able to process a claim for a consumer who had a car accident even before the consumer file a claim had been going on for quite awhile. Everyday I pass in front of Time Square in Causeway Bay, the most expensive piece of real states in Hong Kong, I saw it. I f your story does not WOW, or Ops, or OMG Or there is not enough time for your to tell a WOW/OPS/OMG story. ... ... One Day, I stopped to watch it. And I am confused. A list of question comes across my mind: How comes the newspaper is faster than the client? How much percentage of these accident is covered by a newspaper? How much is the possibility that an agent happen to read this piece of news and s/he is also the  person in charge of the client account? All in all, what is the odds that such a story is true? And to a UX person, how the target customer can po...