Infosys TechCompass

Macro design

Trend 2: Safe and secure designs become prominent to win customer trust

Digital data drives businesses, but the major differentiator is the safety and security of that data. Now, organizations are focusing on collecting only essential data and avoiding the risk exposure of securing and storing large data pools. Beyond data provenance, governance, and compliance, products must win over consumers by demonstrating how exactly consumers' data is being used.

Explainable and trustworthy AI has become an important part of this experience.

An ecosystem that fosters trust by design encourages greater and more active participation among stakeholders. Gig economy platforms are the best examples of this. Here, the platform orchestrators shape participants' behavior toward cooperation by expanding from trust between participants to trust in the ecosystem.

With AI being applied to high-stakes applications, explainability becomes important. Businesses will have to make it explainable, i.e., AI programmed to describe its decisions and data usage to all stakeholders.

Transparency and impartiality in AI are essential to building trust. This way, users can understand the context behind the data and design algorithms that support human values. It needs a well-designed reputation system and a right level of disclosure that remove biases and set precise expectations among participants.

A large U.S. health insurer partnered with Infosys to adopt a “privacy by design” approach. The company wanted to protect its member and provider data while developing services and products. The company extensively leveraged Infosys Enterprise Data Privacy Suite for data de-identification, masking, and on-demand services.

Macro design

Trend 3: Contactless experiences gain consideration across industries

Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions are increasingly becoming contactless — meetings, transactions, purchases, credit cards, consultations, curbside pickup, etc. The reason is convenience and heightened awareness of health and safety. Technologies such as AI, 5G, and cloud platforms enhance contactless experiences.

AI capabilities and a range of sensory experiences offer glimpses of what the future holds. AI-powered biometrics data from sensor-tracked eye and finger movements to predict numerals and letters without touching the screen are becoming a reality. This takes us closer to a world of gesture recognition, where a wave, a smile, or a frown allows customers to access and interact with screens, products, and objects.

And then there is digital olfactory (smell) technology knocking at the door. It allows the transmission of a variety of aromas, smells, and taste sensations. Your smartphone could be a way to sample sights, smells, and flavors.

However, as experiences become touchless, people will miss the “human touch” in their interactions. A buildup of “experience debt” and resulting alienation will have to be compensated by computing to detect users' physical states, infer their needs, and respond contextually and emotionally. Further, with 5G and cloud-native application rollouts, businesses are set to harness the opportunities arising from contactless experiences.

A large utility company wanted to extract information and display details about field equipment to field engineers for better equipment maintenance. Infosys helped the client by visualizing relevant data via augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR). This solution provided an interactive experience to the real-world environment by leveraging perceptual information. The solution augmented sensor information about the field equipment in real time and aided in routine maintenance activities via predictive maintenance capabilities.