2018 was the first year for Avanceé. With new initiatives, there is usually a specific product or problem statement springboarding an audience to figure out why they need what’s being offered. That clarity of focus has been the purpose of the first year with Avanceé. This venture takes a complex paradigm (an intersection of experience design, automation/augmented intelligence/artificial intelligence, & the future of work/industries), and packages it so that individuals, teams, and companies can take the best advantage of the technologies, processes, and experiences which will define them going forward.

Focus for Avanceé in 2018 has meant articulating systems, designing experiences, and engineering complexity. These three terms have expressed what Avanceé brings to any engagement. Therefore, it’s best to use these terms to describe the work which has taken place in 2018.

Articulating Systems

Avanceé spent a good bit of time linking/talking about tools and productivity. Grouping under the topic “Articulating Systems,” this means taking some understood analogies, and peeling the veil from them to explore what’s happening at a simpler level, an automated/AI level, or what might be the perspective of those who are just coming into the understanding that the systems and tools have shifted right under them.

Designing Experiences

Talking about systems is one phase of understanding product and strategy. Another is going about the process of designing what those experiences do, or designing a means to understand the outcomes of various experiential journeys. Under the topic “Designing Experiences,” Avanceé explored not only what it means to live in a world defined by experiences, but also what goes into creating those worlds and making sense of the perspectives which come from those who experience them.

Engineering Complexity

Lastly, no good initiative is worth anything until the rubber meets the road — that is, what are the products and results. Avanceé shared both current and past projects from its workspace. Leveraging tools such as WeTransfer’s Paper and Paste, Marvel App, Adobe’s Comp CC, MindNode, and others to express how it “Engineers Complexity.”

Truth be told, there’s actually been a lot more produced than what’s represented here. This means that there’s a lot of more to be clarified, experimented upon, and created into a sustainable exploration of what it means to take individuals, teams, and organizations forward. Avanceé has been able to articulate what experience design means to the current shape of work; and for the initial clients, used methods leveraging augmented intelligence and experience design to engineer complexity out of their processes.

Sharing Insights

One thing which has gracefully come from much of the work done this year has been a chance to share some insights. Two presentations specifically:

Platform Technologies

Many thanks to @Manton and the Micro.Blog team for such an excellent platform to share these projects and insights. Thanks also to Earn/Coinbase for enabling a means to leverage the blockchain for more than simply tracking transactions (see why Avanceé uses Earn for a contact form). Apple Shortcuts has been a constant companion towards automating much of the workflow from posting to task administration (Zapier, IFTTT, and Microsoft Flow along with these). These and other technologies will continue to be utilized in order to practice what’s being preached, and enhance what’s being done.

One Step Then Another

Creating a focus for Avanceé in 2018 has meant articulating systems, designing experiences, and engineering complexity. This is one stop on a new road forward. Join Avanceé in 2019 in building what happens when we step outside of the box, and into the opportunities the next decade opens for us all.