$6.5B for 55 People: Robot Interaction Still in the Stone Age

Last Friday afternoon, while I was staring at the 8px spacing of a button in the design system, a headhunter suddenly called, saying some robotics company offered a daily rate of 500k to poach me for interaction design. I refused. Because I had just experienced their "smart service robot"—in a restaurant, when it handed a tray to me, the deceleration curve of its arm was stiff as if it had been slammed in a door, its fingers opened and closed 0.3 seconds too slowly, and I nearly spilled soup on my pants. No amount of money can save an experience like that.