Adam Oliveira
My last blog post featured JRC9 Design Studio, advocates of social change through design. This blog might seem contradictory to that, and instead discuss the impacts of design on social structure in the future. We met with Adam Oliveira from IBM and Apple, who took an hour to inform us about what we can expect the design world and design careers to evolve into in the very near future. The Senior Design Manager at IBM and Practice Lead of Design at Apple, Adam had insight as to where technology is moving and how we can prepare to be a part of it when we graduate. To really get our attention, he told us the 5 design jobs that will not exist in the future, essentially stating that any jobs we have will be obsolete. A self-proclaimed “tech geek,” Adam brought his retro cool vibe to what people my age might consider an “old person brand.”
His LinkedIn reads
“I have been a technology designer, inventor, and entrepreneur for more than 25 years. In my roles at IBM, Organic, Blast Radius, and Saatchi+Saaatchi, as well as partner and co-founder of 3 startups, I have had the privilege of leading and collaborating with many wonderful teams on projects in aviation, automotive, energy+utilities, telecom, health, entertainment, consumer goods, financial, and government. From small screen such as the Apple Watch to large screen such as wall-sized interactive displays … In 2012, I co-founded Blitztream to design games that combined tactile and digital play … I joined Apple+IBM in 2015, leading product design for enterprise iOS apps powered by IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive computing services, to reinvent mission-critical work for industrial end-users such as flight and maintenance crew, miners, mechanics, and freight delivery.”
Education
OCADU - Industrial Design
Work History
Quizative Inc. | 2008 - 2012
Blitztream Games Inc. | 2012 - Present
IBM | 2015 - Present
IBM and Apple
Adam is the lead of the design team at IBM in partnership with Apple. This team works extremely close with the engineers. There are 20 designers in his Toronto office and 6 studios across Canada with designers. 2 years ago, when the partnership started, being a brand loyalist, he was very excited for Apple. He said the first time there leading a design workshop was exciting, and exactly what you’d think Apple is. “Their whiteboards are the cleanest whiteboards you’ve ever seen.” Then he had an opportunity to go to the online research lab to talk about design and the partnership which he compares to making the big jump from teenage to adulthood, “It’s kind of like going from high school to MIT.” IBM is full of really smart people which is hard to find all in one place. He felt surrounded by innovators, inventors, and brilliant minds working for Apple, the king of consumer tech, and IBM, who is doing so much work that’s running the world like computational systems and AI and competent computing.
Despite initially feeling like a fish out of water, Adam said that the culture of IBM made it become home. Surrounded by a great bunch of people, IBM is really interesting. Corporately, they’re one of the most progressive companies with work/life balance. Essentially every employee is a remote worker, which means that there is no policy that says you have to be in the office 9-5 as long as they can get in touch with you. Adam is all over the place, spending a week in Silicon Valley every month, so it’s hard to tell people to be in the same place at the same time every day. When there’s a team, then they all make an effort to get together to work collaboratively. While yes, there is bureaucracy and guidelines, it’s really not so old fashioned. They’re very rank agnostic. You could work with a team that has some very important figures but also some college grads or interns and the team works just as seamlessly. In comparison to Apple, the people are relatively similar in culture but everyone you talk to at Apple is very design centred, no matter their role. They all speak fluent design, and IBM is trying to build this culture of design as well.
5 Design Jobs That Will Become Obsolete
Now coming back to those 5 design jobs that Adam told us won’t be around much longer thanks to evolving technology, Adam explained how each of those roles will change. The 5 areas include UX/UI Design, Visual Design, Industrial/Product Design, Communication, and Big Data.
UX/UI Design - This will turn into artificial intelligence and cognitive systems, like self driving cars (Google, Tesla, etc). Transportation is a really natural fit for AI. We’re going to see a transition from augmented intelligence (AI that assists you) to more dependence on AI as the technology matures and becomes more reliable. What’s going to drive this shift is the generational shift. The new generation doesn’t really care so much about driving and would just take transit, Uber, ride a bike, etc. Self driving cars will be much more normal for the new generation. UX is going to evolve, not just about designing a touch screen interface, but to designing the experience of how we interact with an AI device like a car, or a fridge..
Visual Design - We’re starting to see more mixed reality (VR and AR). We see this a lot from Oculus Rift and Hololens. Adam is really excited about how these big goggles are going to become sleeker, smaller, more discreet. He thinks this will happen faster than we think it will. He’s interested in where this will go from an entertainment medium to more serious applications like medicine, or aircraft maintenance. For designers, there is a huge amount of opportunity to design these environments and to design in the environments, not constrained to a 2D surface.
Industrial/Product Design - This includes robotics, drones, and more. We are really seeing advances in how these mimic human limbs and movement. Adam showed us a video of an MIT scientist who lost both legs in climbing accident. The scientist realized that today’s robotic limbs weren’t advanced enough and created bionic limbs that pick up electrical pulses from the muscles and send feedback back to his muscles. This new biotic functions pretty close to an actual limb. What’s interesting for designers is this opportunity to design for robotics, like cosmetics, interaction between limbs and muscles. They will no longer be a disadvantage, because the new bionic devices will be superior to what we are born with.
Communication - Moving forward, communication will transform into conversation, and not between humans. Rather, our communication with devices will become more common and we will become more reliant. IBM is currently working on a device, or AI, called Watson. At the present state, it’s like a 5 or 6 year old child that they are feeding data and it will continue to mature. Watson is able to search the web for anything you might ask it to do and perform tasks for you, like booking a flight. Similar to Apple’s Siri but much more advanced and with a bigger library of online information, Watson is a revolution of your personalized AI.
Big Data - Big Data is evolving into predictive analytics, used in things like medicine, the weather, and more. IBM is working on a conceptual UI to predict outcomes of diseases and treatments based on certain therapies, and will require design for this creation and the presentation of it’s data. Using Watson, things like facial recognition and crime prevention will be easier to work through and use to keep society safer. It will no longer be a collection of information but a constant analysis of it.
I find that knowing the future, or thinking about it a little too hard, can be very threatening. Having Adam walk us through it and explain how we will grow into it was certainly a good way of easing my mind. Technology is ever-changing and however scary that may be, all we can do is embrace change and enjoy the ride.
To have a senior designer from the likes of IBM and Apple come and speak to us was also a little bit surreal. These corporations are absolutely mega and I think that they are aspirational employers for a lot of the students in my program. I know that I would love getting the chance to work for Apple and move down to California for a bit. Adam showed me that this doesn’t necessarily have to be a pipe dream. I somehow think that living in Canada is barrier to all of these great American companies but after this conversation, I believe it is actually a great stepping stone to move from place to place or even work in a merger similar to IBM and Apple’s. All in all, my main focus now is to continue pushing myself in school so I feel comfortable enough with web design to apply it to the future changes coming to all of these fields. Scary, but really exciting stuff I’d say.
If you’d like to know more about Adam, check out his LinkedIn, and learn more about IBM’s Watson here!
