The humble app, humans and the advance of the machines

If you’re interested in the intersection between humans and the advance of the machines and what it means for the next wave of technical innovation? You have to checkout the Human and the Machines podcast series, now.

Not only will you hear from the likes of internet and digital luminaries Sue Black OBE and digital heavyweight, Martha Lane Fox but our very own Hana Sutch, director at Furthermore, features alongside tech journalist Charles Arthur and Julia Hobsbawm and together talk about the humble app and how it came to be one of the biggest new tech industries of our age. According to a recent Google search the total number of app downloads reached nearly 2 billion in 2017. With the app store turning 10 in Summer 2018 and 80% of fickle users failing to look at your app after three months, Sutch, explains why and how we at Furthermore made the leading walking app, Go Jauntly.

Listen to the podcast here or just press play below:

Go Jauntly - Human curation in the the era of the machines

With Go Jauntly, we want people to take the most interesting routes from another human’s perspective. This means that it may not be necessarily the most efficient route, it’s the scenic route. Automated systems are great at predicting efficiencies based on data, so a service that predicts the fastest or most popular route from A to B based on footfall or mobile phone connections of course has its use, but in our eyes, lacks the personal touch and beauty of human curation and storytelling.

Whilst Go Jauntly is an app and uses the very platform that people are addicted to, Go Jauntly has been purposefully designed to not require constant attention to a phone screen - it’s a vital aspect to it. As the team know all too well, it’s no fun having your phone out all the time whilst out on a wander. This is why we coined the term “intermittent-interaction” during the design and development stages. This was to ensure that during the times you needed to glance at the phone, they were micro-moments - so that the rest of the time you could be enjoying nature, people, the city, basically connecting with everything else but the phone.

What’s your best example of human curation versus the machines? Let us know at hello@furthermore.co.uk or if you haven’t already, download Go Jauntly on the UK app store now and subscribe to the Human and the Machine podcast now.

Furthermore are an evidence-led, product & service design studio. By analysing data and insights to inform our decisions, we help organisations create services and products based on evidence, not opinion. A hypothesis driven design framework helps us achieve this. Please get in touch if you would like to know more. Using our methods we envision unique experiences built on a solid functional foundation that are a pleasure to use and have the potential for meaning, delight and significance in people’s lives.

Have an idea you want to discuss? Call us for a free consultation.