About The Human-Computer MasterMind Academy and HCI


I research and report on the life of the Creative at the dawn of the Age of Machines: I’m experiencing, investigating, writing, reporting, and narrating about the impact of artificial intelligence on human creativity, creative people, and human-computer interactions — and I’m the primary subject.

Driven by artificial intelligence, the world is changing, human civilization is changing, and we need to come together, to talk about this, to share our experiences, to support and guide one another. This moment presents vast opportunities and vast challenges — how are we to make the most of the opportunities and cope with the vast challenges? How are we preserving and deepening our shared humanity? How are we becoming less stupid, with all this staggering new intelligence at our fingertips? What stories will we tell our ourselves, each other, our children and grandchildren and future generations about this moment and how we faced it?

AI is the catalyst that will shock and rattle and challenge many aspects of human existence. Those far-reaching and profound changes are the subject matter for my investigations and reporting. The ripples will flow far and wide, with many unknown unknowns.

‘It’s not Ai that will redefine humanity, it’s the humans with Ai, and the reactions of all the other humans that will redefine humanity’.

The game has changed and the old rules no longer apply — the game of business and entrepreneurialism, the game of art, the game of occupying a meaningful role in the world. Before AI and until now, we’ve all tried to play nice, to learn the rules, to be ‘useful’ and relevant – but if what we claim as our reasons for being useful in the world are no longer relevant or true, then what?

What game do we play instead?

After a 5000-year run, this is the end of the writing craft as we’ve know it and all professions and endeavors associated with it. I’m compelled and privileged to experience and report on this historical moment.


ABOUT ME

This mission I’m compelled to follow may be unique in human history. From this moment, I can apply to this inquiry my long experience in UX and human-computer interactions, my passion for research and interviewing, my mastery of analysis and insight, my writing and reporting skills — combined with all the power of AI itself.

I’m following my call to usefulness by reaching out to those who face uselessness because they or their art or their professions may be replaced or made obsolete. At my age, this may be my last chance to be useful. And it may be our only chance as a civilization to get this right.

Now I get to be the historian, to participate directly in the most profound shock that modern society could imagine. My creative inclinations cannot leave that alone.


This is all about User Response.

Your users hold your success in their hands. To understand, master, and perfect their willingness to respond to whatever you present to them, you must experience what they do, as they do it, with your virtual presence. This ‘experience of their experience’ –  the Experience Experience – reveals insights that are critical to your success and are not available to you any other way. Your ability to generate the user responses you need is at the center of the art and science of HCI – human-computer interactions. 

Everything that you attempt online, and therefore much of what you attempt in the world, is totally dependent on User Response. For the user’s benefit, Response means he or she found meaning, value, and relevance in what you offer them. For your benefit, Response means engagements, conversions, and orders – it’s essential in all HCI. 

You are told relentlessly that your online success depends on your content or design or social media or technical excellence or the value of your unique selling proposition. And those are all necessary, but seriously insufficient.

Yes – you still need excellent content, well-crafted social engagements, superb design, bullet-proof quality, and relevant value offered. But you cannot rely on any one of them alone or even several of them. 

  • Content is absurdly saturated. On WordPress alone, 56 million blog posts are published every month. And a user reading or viewing passive content will only retain about 10% of that content – so therefore its power of influence and its capacity to generate user response are both limited and fleeting. See the ‘Content Saturation sidebar.
  • Social’s value and importance are fading. The growth of participation in social sites has stalled. The world is burned out on social, and people are deleting their social apps, logging off, and reclaiming their lives.  See the social media trend data below.
  • Design without substance and value is gratuitous and hollow. 
  • Value is meaningless unless effectively communicated and unless the users can easily and clearly apply it to their own businesses or their own lives. 
  • Quality must always be delivered in a meaningful context, with all the other attributes above.

The answer is The Experience.

Experience is the now, the future, the differentiator, and the X-factor that drives user response, that’s at the center of all human-computer interactions (HCI). And you are a Producer of experiences. You must think of yourself as a Producer of virtual experiences that generate User Response. 

The exact moment of the user immersed in The Experience of their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to your virtual productions is the critical moment of your success. Every aspect of your USP, value, persona, strategy, message, products, services, offers – all of it – comes together at that moment. There is nothing else. That moment is where your online success is going to live or die. Every KPI that you can imagine starts and ends there.

That precise moment, that central dynamic of humans interacting with technology, is the driver of all that happens in the online world. And because online activity is now so predominant, it’s the driver of so much of what happens in the world.

There is a ‘gestalt’ when all those come together in an effective virtual experience  – content, design, value, quality. Your capacity to be a Producer of that gestalt is the path to your online success, and therefore your success in the world.

But it’s difficult to see that gestalt on your own, you do not have the perspectives or the cognitive reactions or the emotional detectors of your users.

There is only one way: through The Experience Experience. 

There is no realm of online knowledge so neglected that has so much potential impact on what can be achieved.  Is not the real truth about the value we offer, and how well our audience can find, understand, and apply that value at the center of what we are all about? That’s the User’s Experience that drives all that you are. 

In the Human-Computer MasterMind Academy, you’ll discover the Producer’s Experience by getting in the center of that User’s Experience. I not only Craft powerful events that put you in that ‘Experience Experience’, I will teach you and your team how to create that Experience Experience over and over, how to interpret the unique insights revealed with it, and how to act on those discoveries in your operation. 

The Academy offers an immersive, high-ROI Experience Experience.  The ItsTheUsers.com digital learning system and web platform teaches you all the basic, intermediate, and advanced principles. 

This is my way of contributing to the entire collective interactive experience in the world today and advancing the state of the online arts.

The Experience Experience in the Human-Computer MasterMind Academy will also: 

  • Reveal hidden gems about your audience and their needs that point to powerful innovations and ways you can create new value. 
  • Uncover hidden functional problems and help you fix what’s broken, and remove experiential disconnects that are invisible to you. In addition to ensuring your systems are fundamentally sound, you’ll learn how to reach new levels of performance and effectiveness. 
  • Prepare you for the future and dramatic new advances in human-computer interfaces. The online arts always march ahead, and are always on the verge of brilliant new interactive experiences. This presents both challenges and opportunities. In the Experience Experience, you will discover the art, science, and practice of new design approaches. Companies that did not face emerging experiences become footnotes in business history – think iPhone vs. Blackberry, Facebook vs. MySpace, Google vs. Yahoo, and the Walkman vs. the iPod. 
  • Show you the power of progressive, dedicated, long-term commitment to iterative experience research and refinement. All successful online companies and endeavors master this progressive style. 

Culturally, the ubiquity of universal human-computer experience transforms society. I’ve practiced and perfected the Experience Experience with thousands of real users in the real world, over the last 20 years, all over the planet. I know in my heart I can rock your world. 

Learn: About Bob Berry