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Plenty of agencies say they’re human-centered (or if they don’t use that term exactly, say they care about people, or put them first). Most mean it aspirationally, at best. We mean it in practice. 

It’s how we decide which projects to pursue, who to hire and where we set the bar for ourselves. It was the founding principle of Nebo back in 2004, and it’s the lens we’re now holding up to the biggest shift our industry has faced since: the shift toward AI.

Every now and then, we need a change of perspective to move forward in the world, especially when our circumstances change dramatically.

We’re on the cusp of something huge. Our lives are becoming increasingly networked. More of our devices understand what we say, and some even think (on a basic level) for themselves. Estimates for the number of connected devices by 2020 range from 50 billion to 200 billion. That’s around 25 connected devices per person on the planet. The smart-home industry, which was non-existent a few years ago, will be worth nearly $60 billion by the same year. With hundreds of millions of wearables, connected cars and the like, we’re stepping into a sci-fi reality of Oculus Rift, Microsoft Hololens, Google’s autonomous cars and IBM’s Watson.