 Hello everyone. I'm going to start with a story of how many of you have experienced such experiences which feel very natural to you, but has totally changed in the last few years. Any example you have? Which is natural now, but it was not natural earlier. Is it audible? Okay. Let me give you an example. The other day, I wanted to go home so I wanted to take a taxi. I came down to my office and I saw there's a taxi waiting for me and I thought, okay, let's just take this one, not book a cab today. And I took that taxi home. I reached home. I was very happy to see my kid. I started playing and pretty happy. But all of a sudden, I realized after some time, I forgot to pay the taxi driver. Even the taxi driver didn't ask for it. I was so surprised. It happened because I was so used to taking cabs using these apps like Grab or Uber. We don't think about payment anymore. We take a taxi, get out of it and we are done. And we don't want to even fiddle with cash and spend that extra minute in the taxi. I want to get out of it as soon as possible. And this is a story I'm going to talk today, how things are getting invisible for us. I'm Mitushi. I work at Visa Innovation Center. We think about payments all the time. I am a passionate traveler. I'm a curious traveler which makes me more passionate about different cultures and to capture those different cultures and observations, I love photography. I have a two-year-old son which makes me more empathetic now as a designer. Life is changing. Today I'm going to talk about three key things. The first is invisibility is happening now. It was once a fiction but it's no more a fiction. We are experiencing it in today's world. How is it possible now? What is enabling it? And the third thing, how can we design for it as designers? Invisibility is not a new thing. In 1911 Mark Weiser from Xerox PARC talked about UPQTIS computing. I'm sure many of you have heard about it. He was talking about how technology can get so pervasive that the things happening with that technology gets more natural to the user. He was talking about it's getting weaved into the user's life so much that we don't think about it. The experiences to us feel more natural. So yeah, he's been talking about it since 1911 but there are many other people who are talking about it. The fictional things. We have seen black mirror or humans from Amazon where we have seen some live examples of how technologies enabling invisible experiences for us. It does get overwhelming a lot of times. I'm not talking about black mirror but I'm talking about real experiences which is possible now. Getting coffee. Very common scenario right? You get coffee every day in the morning. Every day we stand in the queue and order that coffee. Same coffee but still I have to stand in the queue and still I have to make the payment and wait for my order. Why can't it happen more seamlessly? You know me, who I am. We can use speakers to identify who you are, establish the identity. Recommend me something which you know I would order most of the time, recognizing my pattern. I say yes, why not? Just order that flat white. And tells me when the order is ready and I just go to the counter and pick it up and the payment here again is invisible. Like it just happens right? I really don't need to take out that piece of plastic or take out my cash to make the payment. It can happen seamlessly. So here the whole experience of getting coffee is still there but how it's getting enabled is very invisible. Another example, thanks Ike for the connected card. I'm going to use that similar example here but more for payment. So how can I pay for parking in much more seamless manner? Do you remember the days where we used to carry those change? Dollar 10 bills and 5 bills and awkwardly getting out of the window to pay that to reach that machine. It's still happening at many places but still Singapore is a bit ahead in that. But now with the connected devices it can happen automatically again. Like I go inside the parking, I come out of the parking. You just tell me that it happened. You don't make payments without knowing that it happened. So we are in the era of invisible design. It is not scary looking at the emoji there. But it is happening around us in every sphere of life and we need to be ready for it. And as a designer we need to design for it. It is happening at home where our entertainment devices are connected. We listen to Spotify and it starts playing what we want which is amazing right. It's happening in our car. It tells you the best route possible to your workplace. It is making payment without you making an effort. It schedules your maintenance of the car without making an effort. It's happening in our leisure time. When I see social media these days it creeps me out sometimes because it's recommending me my next destination so well and I am so tempted to go to that new place all the time. It knows my pattern. It knows who I am and it recommends me something which I really want to do. Our bodies, Fitbit scale. I start on that Fitbit scale every day in the morning but I am just taking one action but everything else around it is happening automatically. It is telling me what exercise should I do today. It is telling me what diet should I take. It is actually maintaining my body. Shopping. Again it is telling me the best deals. The recommendations. Cities which gets more interesting right. The experience in cities is also getting usable. My train timings are getting automatically altered based on the traffic we have. Your red lights are getting more and more smart depending on the traffic condition on the road. It is just managing things seamlessly without me even knowing it. I think this thing translates into a big design principle for all of us and something which I as a person I want to do naturally. The experiences should get invisible or the way of actually experiencing the experience should get invisible. It is a big design principle which we look at when we work on different projects and even in my personal life. How can we make things simple and we do not even notice it. It just gets natural. Why is it possible now? What is enabling this invisibility? The reason why hardware is changing. We have so many hardwares around us. Remember the days 90's when we just used to have that personal computer and now we have smartphones, iPads. God knows how many devices. We have seen the best transformation ever in this world. We have seen the transformation of hardware happening now. We have heard about the Moose Law and he talked about it saying that every two years the processing speed is going to get double as much as the processing speed. Even if the size of hardware is getting smaller, it is getting cheaper and it is getting interesting for the world of IoT now because we see more and more devices around us which is helping us connect different experiences and making it more important. This is how the hardware plays a part in the payment industry. We started with Bata in 9000 B.C. but the economic conditions changed that system. We then came up with the invention of tokens which was in the form of coins but it had its own limitation because it was bulky, it was difficult to carry around and then we thought let's make it more easier to carry around so we changed it to paper notes. But again paper notes still had the same issue because it is not secure to store so much paper notes. Then we went into the time where we started pooling in the money into an account and represented that account using a physical plastic. We still are in that phase. All of you I am sure have physical plastic in your wallet. But it is evolving further. Why do I really need to carry my wallet? Why can't it be just in the mobile? We are already seeing that shift in many parts of the world and it doesn't end here. It is going to evolve further and further. There is no end to it. Let me give you an example. One of the things we worked on was how can we have the best gaming experiences at Olympics without thinking about payment. You don't really need to carry your wallet but I am there to view the games. I just want to buy my food and beverage and tickets seamlessly. How can we embed that payment into other accessories which you are going to use during the games? For example, because Winter Olympics, having those Winter Gloves connected to payment terminals, having those pins, sewing up pins and stickers enabled with payments. It just makes it easier for people to just go around the Olympics Village and make payments. So it is the hardware which is enabling that payment experience which is natural to people. I just walk and make the payment. Communication. That is a very interesting thing for me because these days we see that it is a madness of notifications. Do we still need that madness? There can be other ways of communicating it. There can be other softer ways of communicating what you want to communicate to the user. One of the examples here is proof of payment. We were studying this in Australia sometime back which is a very tap to pay heavy market where people are very used. It is very natural to them. They just take out the card and tap on a terminal. Whenever you ask them how you make a payment, I just tap down to the terminal. It is so natural and we don't think about it. I think Singapore is getting there but many other markets they don't think about it. They still think about cash or they are still thinking about swiping. Swiping is a thing. I just swipe the card whether it is more about tapping the card. So I asked them how do you know the payment has actually happened? They said there is this tick mark which comes on to the terminal and there is that sound which comes. And sometimes it goes beep beep beep that I know that it is not happening. So they are not looking at the screen. The payment has happened or not. They are just looking at that feedback of payment. Building on to that principle, we worked on to the sensory payment experience which is three-fold. One is that little tick animation and the second is the haptic feedback of vibration. And the third is that sound. I hope it plays. So this is the sound which we worked on which took us an year to actually develop but there was a lot of testing done on it in terms of physical reaction to the sounds, neural research on to that, how people are reacting to that sound. So you will see that sound coming up again and again at many places and it will become like a brand mark of the proof of payment. The third reason, because of all these things human behavior is changing. The experiences are becoming more natural to us. The example I gave, right, the override. There are many other things which are happening. Let me give you an example of a wallet. We are thinking we are still carrying those wallets, right? Maybe the size is getting smaller. In some countries it is still big. Like if you go to Japan, people are still carrying those big massive wallets. You come here, people have shifted to those card holders. But if you go to China, one out of three users is actually using Alipay Char to make the payment. We are getting there. How many of you use mobile payments these days and not use piece of plastic? So it is shifting, right? Your wallet is going to become a phone for you. You don't need a wallet anymore. So that's a behavioral change which is happening in the payment world. But it's visible in many other spheres, right? It's not just the payment. We need to design for such wall. And how can we design for it? It's a big question, right? I'm not going to get into a lot of detail of it, but I'm going to give a framework which we can work upon. So these are the four things which comprises of a good service design model when you're designing for invisibility. First is the North Star. Defining that North Star. Having the guiding principles around that North Star and identifying those micro movements and creating a blueprint. I'm going to talk a bit more about it, how it's going to play out further. Have a North Star. I think finding that right problem which you're trying to solve. I think one of the panelists was talking about it. Finding that right problem which you want to solve is super critical. And we need to understand what will make, if we solve this problem, what will happen to that user. Is it really going to make their life better and simpler? Defining that North Star is super critical and that's the reason why your service or your product or anything you're doing actually exists. There are two components to it. One is having a statement and having an evolution statement. So the vision statement is basically defining if you design the service, what's going to happen to them and what are you trying to solve for them. It acts like a good framework and acts like a good brief for all the people who are working on that project. And vision evolution is super critical I feel because this is what will keep you grounded. Because you will know if you're designed for this particular problem what will your product is going to do to them. It's like a future statement for you. Is it going to really work and how people are actually going to experience it with your new service? Principles. Design principles are super important, right? We need to define a boundary around whatever we are designing. There can be three components to it. It can evolve further but I think these are three things which we really think are super critical when you're defining the principle. What are we trying to capture and what are we trying to learn and what are we trying to decide for the user. If you know these three things in a blueprint it will help us think further. It will help us create that interplay of different components in the service blueprint. Identifying those moments, the key moments that matter are super important. We all know that. But knowing those micro moments in that moment is super critical because if you know that micro moment that's where you're going to make the service the experience invisible. This is a Google framework of micro moments which I find really, really helpful. These are the three different strategies to define any micro moment. The first is the anticipation of being there. You are there before the user actually expects you to be there. The second is contextual. You know the context of the user and that's how you're enabling your service. And as the name suggests micro moment, it needs to be fast and frictionless. So if these three things are there in your micro moment, when you're enabling those micro moments, it really creates that natural experience for the user. And when we think about those micro moments, it's really important what's triggering them. So every action is a reaction. Whatever we're doing, we're reacting to something. If I'm sending payment to someone using chat, it's because someone has asked for it. And how can we anticipate that behavior and create a reaction to it? And to summarize all of this into a service blueprint is something which will help you to deliver really a good experience. And I think we have been doing this a lot and really helps everyone and everyone who's working on that service to know what's going to look like and how it's going to play out. It's an evolving thing. Every time there is a different trigger, you will have a new service playing out for that trigger. So to combine all of it, have a North Star. Really define that North Star and be in sync with whole business that that's what you're working towards. Put it on your wall. Establish principles. Identify what micro moments you're trying to solve for in that particular service. And create a blueprint. It's like an architectural blueprint. I just want to say it's not the end, it's just the beginning. We are starting to get into an invisible world and as a UX designer and other designers, it's our role to make sure that we are not giving extra effort to the user and we are trying to make it more pervasive for them and which becomes more natural and we are changing the behavior for it. It's really important we think about it because evolution is happening faster than ever and we really need to start thinking about it. And I really like this quote from Spider-Man Comics. With this kind of invisibility, obviously we don't want to make it overwhelming, but as a designer who have a lot of power comes a great responsibility. So we need to always make sure that we are in our limits of ethics and privacy and not creeping out people with our new invisible experiences to end with. We are in the era of invisible design and we need to start thinking about it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mithushi. We're just going to hook up our Slido so that we can have more questions. Well, before while we're doing a Slido, I have one burning question. What happened to that cab driver? I paid for him. I tried comfort, they'll go report it and then it was a very different report. It's great to build things that become habitual and invisible, but can it also be the terminal? Example, healthy friction in our products can prevent mistakes. Yes, I think we need to define what type of habits you want to create. Sometimes fiction is important. For example, when I was saying that proof of payment is important, like in the connected car, you don't want to just make the payment and get away with it. You really wanted to give that feedback to the user that the payment has happened because I don't want to see my credit card statement at the end of the month and realize that so many payments happened but I didn't know about it. So yeah, you have to sometimes design for that friction as well, but yeah, we need to be careful what we're designing for. Next question. Do you have experiences using Alipay or WeChat? What do you think, how Visa can stand out from those competitors and win more sticky users by design? Yes, we have been doing more experiments and learning how the behavior is changing, especially in China. It's a very interesting world and there's something to learn from. So yeah, we're learning from it and especially for Visa, I think we have to evolve and design for it. So aside from payments, where else can we apply invisible design? Everywhere. The example I gave, it can be in our home, like how Amazon is doing, right? They are not thinking about just shopping on Amazon.com or whatever the URL is. They are also thinking about how can those micro movements which lead to you to shop on Amazon can be developed further, like having the dash button, which helps you create a list automatically on your refrigerator, for example. So yeah, defining those movements, it's everywhere. We're just going to take our last question for the day. Who defines what's ethical in invisible design, especially when our decisions are being ruled by algorithms? Well yeah, it's a world of AI and we need to be careful when we are designing for it. We don't want to automate too much and again, stressing on the point that we need to be in our limits of ethics and just think as a human what's ethical and what's not and keep in mind when you're designing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Mithushi, for coming over and sharing your experiences with us. Thank you. Big round. Thank you.