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With a customer base including just about everyone, it’s no wonder that the fashion industry is a global powerhouse. In fact, a $2.4 trillion per year powerhouse. If it were a country, it would be the world’s 7th largest economy, on par with the total economic output of France or India. And like practically every other industry—and country—the fashion sector relies on making use of new technologies to support growth.

What’s perhaps surprising is how ahead-of-the-curve many fashion brands and retailers are when it comes to implementing advanced technologies. Below we’ve rounded up 9 examples of fashion brands using advanced tech like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and blockchain to attract customers, grow sales, and develop entirely new product categories.

Here are 9 ways advanced technologies are transforming fashion and retail:

1. Artificial intelligence for designing fashion. Fashionmay be ruled by trends, but a person’s style can be said to be as unique as a fingerprint. Enter artificial intelligence, the cluster of intelligent technologies allowing the fashion industry to shape the future of fashion using algorithms that learn from images to generate new styles on their own.
2. The new reality of VR and AR. The use of virtual and augmented-reality tools is increasing in the fashion world. While early experiments were largely promotional, investment is being made by fashion brands and retailers to create digital environments that not only showcase styles but become an entirely new sales channel. The Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba built a virtual store stocked with goods and made purchase and payment by customers as easy as nodding their heads.
3. Mobile sales via AI-powered messaging bots.As fashion retail has moved online and gone mobile, the industry is attempting to replicate the role of the floor salesperson using AI-powered messaging bots. The fashion brand Burberry, for instance, launched a chatbot in conjunction with London Fashion Week that let users preview new styles and make an immediate purchase.
4. Blockchain will become part of business vernacular. Despite all the attention cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin receive in the press, practically every industry is exploring how to make use of blockchain, the foundational technology that enables Bitcoin. Fashion entrepreneurs are designing wearables intended to tap into the mainstreaming of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Among the offerings are biometric rings that use blockchain to secure a person’s passwords and wearable payment devices for making payments using the Dash cryptocurrency.
5. Shopping assistants go mobile.The retailer Macy’s is building an AI-powered app to assistant shoppers while they’re in the company’s stores. Macy’s On Call uses AI technologies like natural language processing to understand customer questions and provide answers and recommendations. The app is expected to appeal to Millennial shoppers who in many cases prefer to consult their smartphones rather than a floor salesperson.
6. Advances in new materials and wearables. Another new development in fashion is the use of highly advanced materials that give clothes entirely new functionality. Making use of nanotechnology to produce smart fibers and conductive yarns, these fabrics can be used in everything from apparel to furniture covering to bedding. Denim company Levi’s produced an early example of this in the form of a commuter jacket that connected with smartphones; the jacket’s sleeve was designed to accept touch commands. 
7. Talent-spotting using social media. The transformative use of social media in fashion goes well beyond its use as a promotional tool. Social media users who amass large followings on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms earn the attention of fashion brands in the form of sponsorship deals. But social’s influence goes further, to include talent-spotting for roles like fashion photographers, runway models, and back-stage makeup artists, stylists, and producers.
8. Fashion tech accelerators. Taking a page from Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500, the fashion and retail industries have launched innovation labs designed to foster entrepreneurship and technological development. The New York Fashion Tech Lab, for example, is a nonprofit with a mission to support women-led fashion companies. Retailer Neiman Marcus launched its innovation lab in 2012, launching projects like voice-activated sales associate bots and connected fitting room technology.
9. Digital transformation using smart beacons. The retail industry is using “smart beacons” to boost sales and generate new streams of customer data. The systems connect with customers’ devices using Bluetooth and enable functionality like location-based promotions. Beyond the sales aspect, smart beacons provide valuable data that supports internal marketing analysis as well as customer personalization.

Entefy shared insights into the impact of artificial intelligence, automation, and other disruptive technologies most recently in this snapshot covering 27 different industries. 

When most people think about AI, they envision self-driving cars and autonomous robots. But not all AI innovations are quite that sexy. In fact, many current AI applications are rather inconspicuous. But not at all inconsequential.

In this article, we’ll dive into AI’s role in improving four areas: sales & marketing, manufacturing, customer service, and business operations.

The perfect sales & marketing team

Every company wants to increase sales. Some ramp up their marketing, some slash prices to attract more consumers, and some leverage artificial intelligence. AI platforms can analyze marketing and sales performance across search, mobile, social media, email campaigns, and other channels. These smart systems track key metrics, allowing human staff to revise their messaging based on real-time customer feedback.

But AI isn’t just a reporter for creative and business teams. It’s also capable of autonomously adjusting ad spend based on campaign performance, and the rapidly advancing technology has even outperformed human-led agency teams.  

The telecommunications company CenturyLink uses an AI assistant to vet sales leads – essentially evaluating which prospects are most likely to buy and therefore deserve the attention of a salesperson. CenturyLink’s AI platform, which relies on a virtual assistant named Angie, has generated $20 in new contracts for every $1 invested in the system. Angie not only sends 30,000 emails a month, the program analyzes prospect communications to identify promising leads and automatically schedules appointments for them with the relevant sales associate.

Given that most employees spend more than half their workdays on email and other non-urgent tasks, Angie’s administrative abilities alone save the company both time and money. But the analytical side of the AI allows the sales team to direct its resources into the prospects who are most likely to become customers, leading to better returns and higher profits across the board. 

The benefits AI offers to sales teams are many. In addition to time-saving perks, such as automated scheduling, AI can also monitor customer calls to spot problematic patterns. For instance, a salesperson may often talk over clients without realizing it. When the AI points this out, he’s more vigilant about his communication style, and he sees a boost in sales.

A manufacturing ninja

When Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, wanted to increase production of its A350 model, it used artificial intelligence as the cornerstone of its efforts. The company needed to anticipate and reduce disruptions in its production process, so it deployed a self-learning AI platform that analyzed both new inputs and historical production data.

The AI system learned to match current problems with solutions that worked on similar issues in the past. When a worker encountered an obstacle, the system would recommend a strategy for addressing it. As the company’s vice president of digital transformation explained it, “The problem might be new to them, but in fact, we’ve seen something very similar in the production line the weekend before, or on a different shift, or on a different section of the line. This has allowed us to shorten the amount of time it takes us to deal with disruptions by more than a third.”

Charming customers one AI-assisted agent at a time

Chatbots are becoming the darlings of enterprise customer service programs, for good reason. AI-powered bots enable companies to respond to customer inquiries quickly and accurately while freeing human agents to focus on complex issues and requests. China Merchant Bank recently began using a messenger bot to field basic questions from up to two million customers. The majority are seeking information about credit card balances and other easily accessible data, so it makes sense to offload those questions to a computer. A single bot can do the work of thousands of customer service employees who can now focus on higher-priority tasks.

AI-assisted customer service enables companies to respond faster because they can anticipate the questions and deliver immediate answers to simple queries. Rather than having workers sit through every introductory chat or call and decide which ones warrant more in-depth attention, the AI can make those judgements instantly and then answer questions themselves or pass the messages on to human representatives. Such speed and responsiveness lead to improved customer relationships, which ultimately leads to greater sales and profits.

New insights transforming business operations

Data is a business’ most important asset. Which products are most popular, how many recurring customers you have, which processes eat up most of the budget, which are most inefficient – these are powerful numbers that can help you run a smarter, more profitable company.

GE Power expects to save $66 billion over the next 15 years using sensor-based systems to transform data into insights that help optimize operations. The company collects a terabyte of data each day from sensors attached to 1,700 turbines, and it combines that information with 100 million hours of data about its operational procedures and maintenance records. The insights gleaned from those sources allow the company to make better operational decisions and improve its overall processes.

Data collection and analysis can produce groundbreaking insights for companies in all industries. AI can help your business predict market conditions that will affect your sales a few years down the road, along with anticipating potential supply chain disruptions or a shift in demand among your core audience. Instead of being reactionary or relying on past data to make predictions, AI allows you to look into the future and make decisions based on a long-term view of where your company and market are headed.

The potential for AI to transform business operations exists in every industry. Consider the energy sector. The ability to detect and react to potential problems before they become crises is invaluable, both within companies and within the energy industry supply chain. It’s no secret that the power grids in the U.S. are outdated, overworked, and ill-equipped to manage a diverse array of energy sources. Smart grid initiatives will rely on deep learning and other AI techniques to monitor energy usage and direct resources where they’re needed most, which can help reduce blackouts and outages, and in turn reduce business interruptions.

Artificial intelligence includes a wide range of tools that can help your business grow sustainably and your employees work more effectively. By augmenting your team’s talents with AI, you empower them to deliver greater value and help you build a better company. 

Entefy patent takes communication across multiple formats and protocols to an entirely new level

PALO ALTO, Calif. February 7, 2018 — Entefy Inc. has been issued a new patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patent No. 9,819,621 describes an “Apparatus and method for optimized multi-format communication delivery protocol prediction.” 

“The fragmentation in protocols and services over the years has made digital communication much harder than it needs to be for most people. This invention allows a people-centric approach to digital communication where users no longer need to worry about different apps, protocols, or formats just to send a message,” said Alston Ghafourifar, Entefy’s CEO.

Today’s news follows the recent announcement of Entefy filing 15 new patents in the areas of search, AI, blockchain, communication, data privacy, and IoT, bringing the company’s portfolio of filed and issued patents to 46.

In 2017, Entefy announced that it had completed its Series A financing round at a $150 million valuation, the filing of an additional 13 patents in AI, cybersecurity, and data privacy, the issuance of a patent for encrypted search, and the issuance of another patent covering context awareness in messages.

ABOUT ENTEFY

Entefy is building the first universal communicator—a smart platform that uses artificial intelligence to help you seamlessly interact with the people, services, and smart things in your life—all from a single application that runs beautifully on all your favorite devices. Our patented technology combines digital communication with advanced computer vision and natural language processing to create a lightning fast and secure digital experience for people everywhere.

Thanks to its ever-fluctuating valuation, Bitcoin dominates the headlines. Whether it’s a bubble or a world-changing currency is a topic of constant, heated debate. Until recently, speculation about Bitcoin’s legitimacy overshadowed discussions of blockchain, the technology on which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built. However, innovators in a broad range of industries have begun to see blockchain’s potential, and the technology is coming out of the cryptocurrency shadows once and for all.

Blockchain in action

Before we dive into some of the ways blockchain is being applied to data security, poverty reduction, smart energy, and other areas, let’s review what exactly it is. Blockchain is essentially a digital record of transactions that anyone can access. However, no one can easily alter past data entries and it’s very difficult to hack, hence its use in cybersecurity defenses. Additionally, new items only get recorded after all of the computers on the blockchain network verify their accuracy and authenticity, which is why the technology is useful for reducing fraud and corruption.

In short, blockchain holds widespread appeal because it is decentralized, encrypted, and auditable. These attributes make it extremely applicable to efforts to secure data, streamline information systems, and improve public and private services.

Let’s take a look at 5 examples of blockchain at work:

1. Distributing diplomas. There’s something deeply satisfying about crossing a stage and receiving a physical diploma that you can hang on your office wall for years to come. However, paper diplomas fade and they’re susceptible to damage and deterioration. But diplomas issued via blockchain will survive virtually forever. Blockchain isn’t just useful for saving diplomas for posterity, however. By issuing virtual degrees, schools enable graduates to submit this information to employers who may want to verify their application information or delve into their academic histories. Through the use of private-public encryption keys, students would have full control over their data and would be able to decide which prospective employers should gain access.      
2. Improving shipping logistics. Everyone knows the frustration of ordering the perfect birthday gift for someone and then not having it arrive on time – or at all. And if you’ve ever shipped a meticulously crafted care package across the country, you know that shipping costs can seem staggeringly high. Fortunately, such issues may become concerns of the past, thanks to blockchain. UPS and other members of the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance have indicated that blockchain, in combination with artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, will help shipping companies reduce costs and improve delivery times and methods. The transparent nature of blockchain infrastructures will streamline order fulfillment and help companies operate more efficiently. Using high-quality market data and blockchain-secured platforms, shipping businesses will be able to decrease errors and lower labor costs.
3. Tracking farm-to-table food. Agricultural manufacturer Cargill served up a novel use of blockchain for Thanksgiving 2017. Its Honeysuckle White brand used the technology to document and record the journey of each of its family-farm-grown turkeys. Honeysuckle White catalogued the process so that customers could trace their birds directly to the farms on which they were raised. The pilot program provides a model for how other companies can deliver on growing demands for transparency, education, and ethics in how food is grown and distributed.
4. Reducing voter fraud. Every election carries with it the risks of voter fraud and discrimination, and until recently, even the most well-intentioned attempts to alleviate these problems sometimes fell short. Requiring voters to show photo identification at polling stations helped reduce fraud, but it marginalized people who didn’t have qualifying IDs. Blockchain’s use to defend against voter fraud circumvents both problems by allowing voters to use data stored on their smartphones to verify their identities and vote privately and securely. Remember that encryption is a core feature of blockchain technology and that it’s very difficult to alter previously-recorded transactions. By allowing people to verify their identities through their smartphones, both by using personal encryption keys and through biometric measures such as facial recognition, governments could engage a greater number of voters and reduce the chances of fraud and ballot tampering.
5. Securing medical records. There are few greater risks to your personal data security than having your medical records stolen. Yet most hospitals and medical providers are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Criminals who gain access to your medical data can sell it, use it to hack your bank accounts, or bill costly medical procedures to your insurance. Beyond security concerns, obtaining your medical records can be a cumbersome and irritating process, and the lack of centralized access can lead to gaps and inefficiencies in care. Fortunately, blockchain offers a better way. In addition to providing a much more secure alternative to standard electronic record databases, blockchain affords patients more control over their information. Instead of chasing your records from provider to provider, all of your information would be stored in one secure, up-to-date location and you would have full control over what to share with different doctors via public and private encryption keys.

These use cases are but a sampling of how blockchain is transforming industries. Although many companies are only just exploring the ways in which blockchain can help them innovate and deliver better products and services, we can expect to see the technology increasingly take center stage – and perhaps even eclipse Bitcoin in the public conversation. 

Effort plays an important role in the way we value what we do and what we create. It may take a lot of sweat and hard work to, say, build your children’s playhouse yourself, but in the end you’ll likely value what you’ve created far more once it’s completed.

Effort takes effort, and for the most part people and even most animals go out of their way to avoid it. Which is why we value things like computers, elevators, and washing machines because they make our mental and physical lives easier. Many of today’s indispensable technologies are aimed at saving people time and effort, to free us from tedious tasks. Automation technologies like self-driving cars, robots, and artificial intelligence systems represent the promise of a future in which effort becomes almost entirely optional.

Yet when we do invest a great deal of effort to accomplish something, we look back on it with pride, fondness, and a sense of achievement. These feelings have an interesting effect: our memory tends to favor the moments that demanded our effort. The psychology of effort is pretty interesting, and tells us a lot about just how far we want technology to take us towards an effortless future.

Do people prefer the path of least resistance?

Many of us spend a great deal of time trying to find the shortest and easiest path to achieve goals. Every time we get a new project, have to drive somewhere, or need to cook a meal, we examine the options and aim for the one that will get us what we need with the greatest efficiency.

In 1949, the linguist George Zipf wrote about the principle of least effort. He theorized that over time language grows simpler as people start using words more efficiently. He defined the concept as the attempt to ‘minimize the average rate of work-expenditure over time.’

Since then, Zipf’s principle has been used to explain many other activities by both people and animals. For practically any organism, effort is costly. It depletes finite reserves of energy that can be difficult to replenish. Wasted effort gets organisms into trouble, and so creatures have learned to use it sparingly.

Back to the feeling of value in humans. People enjoy and treasure endeavors that test our abilities and demand large investments of time and energy. We run marathons, strive to perfect a work of art, and spend years on hobbies with little practical worth. We try to use our resources efficiently, yet it also seems that the act of stretching those resources to their limits delivers a great deal of emotional satisfaction.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi helped found the field of positive psychology with his research on the flow state, the times when people are totally absorbed in what they’re doing. Flow is often characterized as one of the more enjoyable, rewarding, and productive experiences available to us, despite being difficult to achieve.

One of the necessary ingredients for entering the flow state is a balance between difficulty and ability. We enter flow when a challenge is hard but just within our capabilities, ensuring that it requires all our effort and attention. If it’s too easy, we get bored. Too difficult, we fail. Right in the middle is where we rise to the challenge and perform at our best. It’s not surprising, then, that athletes, musicians, and programmers are professionals who often find themselves in a state of flow.

The IKEA effect and a Betty Crocker flop

People get attached to things, especially when we own them and even more so when we create them. A well-established bias in psychology is the endowment effect, which says something quite profound about how we value things: “The endowment effect is the tendency for people who own a good to value it more than people who do not. Its economic impact is consequential. It creates market inefficiencies and irregularities in valuation such as differences between buyers and sellers, reluctance to trade, and mere ownership effects. “

Research into the endowment effect led to another quirk of human psychology that gets us back to the curious ways people value things. It’s become known as the IKEA effect, expressed simply as “when labor leads to love.” Harvard researchers found that when people put something together themselves, they ascribe greater value to it than if the same good had been purchased.

In one of their experiments, participants valued pre-assembled IKEA boxes at $0.48, while they valued the same boxes after they assembled them at $0.78. They found that the same psychology applies to how we assign value to our cars, homes, and businesses when we fix, build, or improve them.

Interestingly, the IKEA effect occurs independent of whether the effort we expend leads to a poorly built (or fixed or improved) end result. So much so that the effect “is sufficient in magnitude that consumers believe that their self-made products rival those of experts.”

A story from business history shows how complicated it can be to properly value effort. In the 1950’s, General Mills released its Betty Crocker brand cake mixes. The original product required only the addition of water to prepare the mix for baking. But sales lagged. The company scrambled to explain what was wrong with the offering. They found that consumers experienced guilt over making great tasting cakes without expending any real effort. It was too easy. The solution was to make the product less convenient by requiring that the consumer add an egg to create an extra step. And it worked. Consumers felt that they had devoted effort, creating a sense of ownership.

Our automated future may require an asterisk

Today’s world is defined in large part by increasingly powerful technologies designed to make our lives easier. To do more by expending less effort. But the psychology of effort suggests that there may be a limit to just how automated we want our automation, at least in our day-to-day lives. It points to the need for businesses to be mindful of how they design their products. Fully automating our lives may be possible, but it also may not be the solution that brings us the most satisfaction.

As we saw with the data about the flow state, our lives and work are most enriching when we find a middle ground between ease and difficulty. We want technology to deliver convenience because the time we save allows us to direct our efforts to the other tasks and goals that require the best of our abilities. 

There’s a lot of discussion about the impact of AI and automation on jobs these days. But when you read past the headlines, what’s clear is that the topic has a lot of nuance and complexity. So let’s try to break that down a little.

On the one hand, emerging automation technologies—like robotics and artificial intelligence systems—undoubtedly represent the future for job types that feature a lot of repetitive work. Think data entry, tax preparation, and telemarketing. A Deloitte study of automation in the UK, for example, found that the implementation of automation technologies in that region led to nearly 800,000 job losses, primarily in low-skill roles. But at the same time, 3.5 million new jobs were created, these generally requiring technical skillsets and paying $13,000 more per year than the jobs that were lost.

That’s great news if you’re on the receiving end of a new job and a raise. Behind those numbers are, of course, real people who will struggle to find new roles in the rapidly evolving workplace. But the data certainly provides nuance to the discussion of the impact of AI and automation.

In the U.S., manufacturing jobs get a lot of attention in politics and the media, often through soundbites and slogans that greatly oversimplify the dynamics at work. Here again we see a similarly complicated picture. Data from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), an industry trade group, shows that American manufacturers have 3.5 million jobs that they are seeking to fill over the next decade. They describe the challenge as a ‘skills gap’ created by demand for workers with the needed skills to use and manage new automation technologies. NAM has launched a national PR campaign to persuade workers to reconsider careers in manufacturing.

Big-picture, three themes in particular touch on the issues we’ve discussed here, namely the technology-driven impact on work in practically every corner of the job market.

The emergence of a no-collar workforce. The “no-collar” workforce describes the new class of jobs that are neither blue-collar, the traditional term for labor-intensive work, nor white-collar, the traditional term for knowledge work. No-collar jobs are defined by a skills-based, value-driven job market whose workers in many cases don’t have (or need) secondary education. The trend towards companies hiring skilled computer programmers without requiring that they have a college degree falls into this category.

The rise of apprenticeships. Though common in Europe, and especially Germany, increased U.S. interest in apprenticeships is another response to the evolving jobs and skills picture. In June 2017, the U.S. government announced $200 million in new funding to support ‘earn and learn’ apprenticeships. It’s another sign of the widespread need to retrain workers with new skillsets in response to the adoption of automation technologies.

The birth of intrapreneurship. “Intrapreneurship” refers to innovation programs within existing companies. And here, again, we see workers and employers adapting to the impact of AI on their operations. Intrapreneurs are characterized by self-directed skills acquisition, teaching themselves to acquire the knowledge they need to thrive in an ever-changing workplace.

The big takeaway for employees is that—surprise!—technology is developing faster than ever, and workers everywhere face the potential for disruption. The best defense against these changes is to focus on developing the new skills that will be most in-demand in your field.

These days it seems we need to go to great lengths to protect our digital privacy. But there is such a thing as taking it too far, as one Australian man recently learned.

A 60-year-old electrician in Perth, Australia worked for an electrical company that used GPS tracking via a company-owned PDA to keep tabs on its employees. After protesting what he considered an invasion of his privacy, the man began hiding his PDA inside a mylar snack bag, which acted like a Faraday cage and prevented the PDA’s GPS system from transmitting location information. The fact that he used the technique more than 140 times and spent his “off the grid” time playing golf may have accounted for an Australian labor board ruling against him in his wrongful termination suit.

But with all of the tracking going on, much of it happening without our consent or awareness, there’s a certain satisfaction in securing some hard-won privacy. To help you find the level of privacy and cybersecurity that’s right for you, here is a roundup of 9 recent developments:

1. Researchers from a Chinese university demonstrated that “inaudible ultrasonic voice commands can be used to secretly interact with systems like Siri, Alexa, and Google Now.” The scientists first recorded regular voice commands, then converted them into ultrasonic frequencies that humans cannot hear but that many smart devices can receive and process. Using the technique, they were able to execute voice commands including ‘activating Siri to initiate a FaceTime call on iPhone, activating Google Now to switch the phone to the airplane mode, and even manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile.’

2. A new Princeton University study revealed that 400 popular websites use tools called session replay scripts designed to record everything you do on the website. This includes even forms that you fill out partially then abandon as well as data pasted into a form field from your computer’s clipboard. The privacy threat is twofold: first, this level of data collection is poorly disclosed, or not disclosed at all; second, on many sites it was learned that the data was linked to specific users’ accounts (rather than anonymized) and transmitted to third-party servers for processing (and who knows what else).

3. Android users alert. Technology website Quartz announced the results of an investigation into Google’s surveillance of Android users. Turns out, even when Android users have Location Services off, Google continues to record a user’s location using cell phone tower triangulation. “Devices with a cellular data or WiFi connection appear to send the data to Google each time they come within range of a new cell tower. When Android devices are connected to a WiFi network, they will send the tower addresses to Google even if they don’t have SIM cards installed.” In response, a Google spokesperson indicated the company was taking steps to end the policy.  

4. The new Apple iPhone X has attracted attention for its new facial recognition technology, features that Apple state are highly secure. But a recent report suggested that there may be a significant privacy loophole to those claims. It turns out that Apple shares that data with third-party developers in exchange for a promise that they will seek customer permission to use and share the data. The challenge is that once that data leaves Apple’s servers, “That remote storage raises questions about how effectively Apple can enforce its privacy rules,” according to advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

5. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been interpreted by the Federal government to include the power to demand that a tech company build an encryption “backdoor” into their product if asked to do so by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. With the government involved, it’s hard to predict the future of this legislation.

6. Often, people with moderate views of digital privacy rely on the idea of anonymity to justify the use of services that track them and record their lives. The thinking goes: “What does a giant corporation care about me in particular?” That viewpoint was called into questions after a group of security researchers from the University of Washington demonstrated that they were able to track individuals in real-time using about $1,000 worth of location-based mobile ads. They were able to track location as well as the apps and services a person uses, solely by exploiting flaws in mobile ad networks.

7. Yale Privacy Lab researchers found that over 75% of Android apps are secretly tracking users. They reported that, “Android apps tracking users aren’t just small timers looking to make a buck selling data—it’s apps like Tinder, Spotify, Uber, PayPal, Twitter, and Snapchat.” They shared a warning with Apple iOS users as well, stating that many of the apps in their study are cross-platform and likely to behave the same on other platforms.

8. As anyone who travels during the Christmas holidays knows, lines at security checkpoints can be endless. In an effort to reduce wait times, some airports are tracking travelers’ smartphones to be better able to adjust to moment-by-moment increases in the number of people entering security checkpoints. The challenge, of course, is implementing data tracking without consent or without clear policies disclosing how user data is collected, stored, shared, or even sold.

9. Until forced to end the practice by user complaints, Uber’s iOS app had special permission from Apple to record users’ screens. The ability to record a user’s screen comes from something called an entitlement, which lets a developer use certain resources in the normal functioning of their app or service. The problem, as it so often is, is what happens when this ability is exploited without a user’s knowledge. “Although the entitlement isn’t intended for this, the worry is that Uber—or a hacker who managed to break into Uber’s network—could silently monitor activity on an iPhone user’s screen, harvesting passwords and other personal information.” After the issue was reported, Uber announced that it had stopped using the entitlement.

Entefy regularly publishes roundups like this intended to help you stay informed about developments in the always complicated digital privacy universe. Check out our previous article featuring 10 cybersecurity and privacy threats that will make you miss Nigerian prince and lottery email scams.

When it comes to health, technology is making big impacts. Just not all of them are positive. On the one hand, technological advances in pharmaceuticals and medical devices are transforming healthcare and adding new ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent diseases. Think AI-powered X-ray analysis, liquid biopsies, and revolutionary gene therapies. But on the other hand, at the personal level, the picture is not always so rosy.

There are increasing signs that technologies like smartphones and social media are causing physical and mental health problems. Technology use (and especially overuse) is linked to everything from mental health issues to increased accident risk to recurring headaches.

Here are some areas where new research has found disturbing links between technology and health:

1. Decreased happiness and life satisfaction. One study into the links between Facebook use and well-being found that time on Facebook was linked to lower moment-to-moment happiness and overall life satisfaction. The more people used Facebook in a day, the more these two variables declined. The study’s authors wrote: “Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being. These results were particularly strong for mental health; most measures of Facebook use in one year predicted a decrease in mental health in a later year. We found consistently that both liking others’ content and clicking links significantly predicted a subsequent reduction in self-reported physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction.”
2. Distraction increases risk of accident. By now you’ve probably seen a billboard or heard a radio ad talking about distracted driving. Public service announcements like that are the result of data about how serious distracted driving has become, including not only texting, but also reading maps, adjusting music, and using navigation apps. In 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,477 people were killed as a result of distracted driving, 391,000 more were injured, and as many as 660,000 drivers were found to be using electronic devices while driving during the day.
3. Social media leads to social isolation. On the surface, social media should improve a person’s feelings of connection. But one study of social media use and social isolation found that the opposite is true. Across all major social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Vine, Snapchat, and Reddit—increased usage correlated with the perception of social isolation. These feelings are known to stress a person’s physical and mental health by triggering fight-or-flight stress responses that can lead to illness and premature death.
4. Googling symptoms has a name. Hypochondria is a recognized psychological disorder that involves excessive worrying about health. In the Internet area, there’s also cyberchondria, the state of health anxiety fueled by inaccurate or incomplete self-diagnosis using online health resources. Cyberchondriacs are said to schedule unnecessary doctor’s visits and health tests. One study in the UK found that the problem may be costing the British health system more than $500 billion annually. 
5. Comparing yourself to your peers has links with depression. Many people share their best selves on social media, whether it’s their perfect vacation or picture-perfect dinner party. These posts inevitably lead us to comparing our own lives to what we see. Data suggests that this act of comparison leads to mental health issues. One study looked at how we make comparisons to others posts, in “upward” or “downward” directions—that is, judging ourselves to be better off or worse off than our connections. It turned out that both types of comparisons made people feel worse, in contrast to real-life social interaction where only upward comparisons make people feel bad about themselves.
6. Teens slower to learn indirect communication. Hanging out at the mall turns out to have important developmental benefits for teenagers. Because behind all of that chatting and aimlessness are unconscious social experimentation, trying out one’s skills, and succeeding and failing in real-time interactions—all of which serves as training for adult relationships later in life. Modern teenagers are learning (or not learning) to do all of that communication via screens rather than face-to-face. So they’re missing out on developing indirect communication skills like intonation and body language that are the foundation of strong communication and stable relationships.
7. Giving up Facebook improves perceived well-being. Another way to illustrate the impact of social media on our lives is to look at what happens when we say “enough”. A Danish studyinto the effects of quitting Facebook demonstrated that taking a break had positive effects on the two dimensions of well-being: our life satisfaction increases and our emotions become more positive. That data showed that these effects were greater for not only heavy Facebook users but infrequent users as well.
8. Now we’re worrying about ‘screen face.’ Researchers are investigating whether digital device screens impact the health of your skin. There are two main lines of inquiry: whether sunlight reflecting off of screens contributes to skin damage, and whether high energy visible light (so-called blue light) affects the skin. As of yet there is no conclusive evidence to suggest high risk, but to play it safe one dermatologist commented, ‘Until more research is done, people are better off just using broad-spectrum, five-star UVA protection every day.’
9. Yes, staring at a screen too long gives you headaches. If you stare at a screen for too long, you may experience tension headaches as another result of digital eye strain. So that means a lot of headaches given the fact that Americans spend 6 or more hours a day in front of computing devices. Neurologists recommend limiting screen time, avoiding high contrast views, and using anti-glare shields.
10. Does Internet addiction exist? “Everything in moderation” is a pretty reliable ethos, but one that’s a challenge for some Internet users. A study on Internet addiction was funded by the U.S National Institutes of Health, signaling a new level of concern by the mental health community. The study is focused on evaluating whether Internet gaming addiction qualifies for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the compendium of mental health disorders that serves as the basis for diagnosis and healthcare insurance funding.

Entefy has previously shared a roundup of research into the ways new technology is impacting our physical health. We also looked at the accumulating evidence that digital devices have a strong effect on our behavior and mental health as well. 

Yahoo. Equifax. Uber. Every day seems to bring headlines of some new cybersecurity breach or company accused of misusing customer data. More than ever, it’s critical to stay informed so you can better protect your personal data and digital identity. With that in mind, Entefy prepared this presentation covering 10 developments related to privacy and cybersecurity in popular apps and services.

You can read an in-depth look at these data trackers in Entefy’s article, 10 Signs data privacy is the new Wild West.

In recent years, the precepts of good design have expanded to encompass not just physical goods, but services and online businesses as well. Here, the term to know is “user experience,” shorthand for the goal of delivering high-quality, even memorable, experiences to customers. Commonly abbreviated as UX, user experience can be a critical differentiator for just about every business with customers. Yet delivering truly engaging UX takes effort, testing, creativity, imagination, and hard work.

The business writer and consultant Geoffrey Moore made an insightful comment about the importance of UX, framing user experience in terms of “moments of engagement.” He goes on to define these moments:

“You can think of these as tiny milestones in the customer journeys you are seeking to engineer. Which ones mark the key inflection points in those journeys? What are your moments of truth?”

Below we’ve assembled a list of 7 insights about the importance and power of UX that should be relevant to professionals in any line of work.

1. 9,900% return on investment. Research from Forester shows that on average every $1 in UX investment generates nearly $100 in business value. To realize that value, organizations need to apply design thinking to every customer-facing aspect of their business and institute a program of continuous improvement.
2. UX is a science. There isalso the view that successful UX requires interaction with and input from users. This view holds that the best way to identify areas where your business can improve UX is to preform user testing. In many cases, as few as 5 user tests can reveal the majority of the shortcomings of your product offering. But, importantly, user testing is not a one-time event. Adopt continuous cycles of feedback and improvement to make UX an integral part of your strategy.
3. UX is an art. Some proponents of user experience design maintain that the discipline is the domain of the visionary designer. Apple represents this view; Steve Jobs once said that ‘people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.’ He believed that successful UX emerges from talented designers building a user experience from the ground up, independent of activities like user tests and focus groups.
4. Give the user control. One of the true innovations of the UX philosophy is a change in perspective. That is, companies embracing UX need to transition from designing for their own needs to designing for the customer’s needs. User-centric thinking is a pillar of UX, but one that can be difficult for many companies to implement. After all, a large successful company has deeply engrained processes and perspectives; instituting a new worldview doesn’t come easily.
5. UX is not UI. For technology companies whose products are experienced through device screens, the distinction between UX and UI (user interface) is an important one. UI generally refers to the digital interface a user interacts with. Its definition is limited to what’s available to the user to take action with. UI is an element of UX in that how the interface works is one factor in the overall user experience. Think of a movie review app: the UI determines the look and feel as well as the functionality of the app, while the UX impacts the user journey and the flow of information, including the steps required to find information.
6. Good UX is like a successful dinner party. Barry Katz, a fellow at the legendary design collective IDEO, took inspiration in the ideas of Charles Eames, of Eames chair fame. He suggested that designers think like hosts expecting guests: “You are not creating for yourself. You are creating for another person, not an ‘end-user’ (ugh!) but a guest, whom you must welcome into your world. The people who use what you build must be made to feel at home with what you have done.”
7. UX is a competitive differentiator. User experience can provide key competitive advantage even for businesses whose products are otherwise low-value commodities. Just look at the water bottle company Swell. Entrepreneur Sarah Kauss founded the company on the insight that the humble water bottle could become a fashion accessory. Swell borrowed techniques from the fashion industry like name-brand designers and seasonal releases, using UX to create buzz and drive demand. It worked spectacularly: the average Swell customer has purchased 5 of the company’s water bottles.

As a technology company, Entefy is obsessed with how exceptional design impacts people’s lives. Be sure to check out our article discussing the problem of ageist design in digital products.