I think looking at how humans interact with automation is going to be absolutely huge. I think basically every industry is going to have some aspect of that.

So there’s a lot of attention right now into not just new technologies but AI and machine learning and even robotics and a lot of talk about these are going to potentially take our jobs.

The research that I’m doing can apply broadly to really understand where is the line you want to draw in terms of how much automation is really going to be beneficial at a high level versus that manual or human component.

And I think the most powerful interfaces are going to be the ones where it’s a bit of myself doing it but also a bit of the automation so I can leverage what the computer is really good at but leverage my own skills and creativity as well.

As technologies evolve the ways in which we can learn new things are also evolving. We found there are things you can inject into the user interface that just give people little nudges to change their behaviours and get to that next plateau of performance.

We’ve done projects where you can ambiently display alternative workflows or commands or features that the user might want to use and sort of just gradually progress along that learning curve.

Every time there is an evolution in technology it gives us a chance to step back and think about what is the implication that might have on our lives and, for me, how might that change the way we learn and become better people.