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       Oftentimes, when trying to decide what shows or movies to watch on our favorite streaming services, we look at what is being recommended to us. Most TV shows and movies we watch on streaming services (like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime) are discovered through an algorithm that informs the recommendation system. The following article focuses specifically on the recommendation systems in Hulu mobile App and Netflix TV, and the way in which machine learning can be applied to improve this algorithm.

       Creating a truly customized theme for Material UI can be a daunting task. There is some documentation available on the Material UI website, but it’s limited. And it doesn’t quite cover all of the options you may want to customize. For example, Material UI uses only two main colors (primary and secondary), and the color scheme I created has three main colors – I added a default color. In addition, you can’t just add different color options in one spot – they have to be added to each component (there are over 30) that you want to have more than 2 color options. Here are some tips and tricks beyond the minimal documentation that’s already available.

      As consumers, we expect our shopping experiences to be engaging and intuitive. More and more brands are going beyond traditional means of website and storefronts by opening temporary and permanent immersive retail experiences. What is an immersive retail experience? It is a highly instagrammable, interactive happening that is re-thinking traditional brick-and-mortar stores and taking over both the art and retail worlds alike. Some examples include Samsung 837, Sony Lost in Music, Ikea Play Cafe, Adias NDM, Visible’s InVisible, Dolby Soho...the list goes on and on. At their core, these immersive retail experiences are driven by good UX design. They attempt to connect with consumers by creating moments of empathy and personalization, immediately satisfying interactions and word-of-mouth marketing strategies. It may not be a website but all the same principles are applied.

     Personas are personable, actionable, and detailed descriptions of 3-5 archetypes of the people who use your product, service, or brand and are also critical to the long-term success of your business. The objective of personas in product design is to establish a common reference point by which to anchor both tactical and strategic product decisions in user-centric design. Robust personas paint vivid pictures of who each archetype is, what their lifestyle is like, what they care most about, and what their attitude is like in product-relevant scenarios.

One of the big themes of nearly every SXSW event we attended was personalization. Even events about the Future of TV had panelists talking about supplemental apps or making sure people could watch on the devices they chose. A news discussion with Dan Rather and Dan Pfeiffer also discussed how people consume news on the platforms of their choice, like Facebook and Twitter. Customers are looking for a more personal, customized experience in the place of their choice.
Predictive technology is making big strides in making these more curated experiences accurate. Facebook’s facial recognition technology is making use of their extensive data on user tagging so they can auto-tag your photographs when you post them. This technology may be more accurate than that of law enforcement. Netflix’s House of Cards was famously made by using data to understand that a political drama starring Kevin Spacey directed by David Fincher would be popular. An important consideration with using predictive data for customer recommendations is providing said data to customers.

Last week a gift arrived at our doorstep. Wooden martini glasses. Impressed, excited (to drink a martini from a beautiful wooden glass!), and a tad confused we opened the envelope. It read: “Happy 5^th Anniversary, Key Lime Interactive. May we someday have an opportunity to send you a gift of gold.”