Responsible AI and UX for AgeTech
Research, design, and governance that get AgeTech adopted.
Three questions decide whether AgeTech sells and whether it’s adopted: does the product do the job in a real care setting, will staff and residents actually use it, and will the AI stand up to a buyer’s or a regulator’s questions.
I settle those for the teams building AgeTech and the care organizations that buy and deploy it. You work with me directly, not with a firm.
or email ezra@artandtech.com
Booking opens Calendly’s scheduler here, along with its cookies. Chicago time (CT).
Clients
I work with the teams that build AgeTech and the care organizations that buy and deploy it.
Teams building AgeTech
You sell to care organizations, and your product has to pass their evaluation and work for every role that touches it, from care staff to residents.
For teams building AgeTech
Care organizations adopting AgeTech
Vendors promise more than a demo can prove, and you need to know what will hold up in daily use before it reaches your staff and residents.
For care organizations
Because I work with both sides, I know what each expects from the other, and I will tell you plainly when the two do not line up.
Painpoints
Most people reach me at one of a few points, and which points depends on whether you build AgeTech or deploy it. Each one has money attached: the deals you win, or what the technology returns once you have bought it. If one sounds like where you are, that is a good reason to talk.
If you build AgeTech
Demos land and pilots start, but the contracts do not follow, and nobody can tell you why.
I find what the deal is actually failing on, in the product or in how it lands in the buyer's operation, so the pipeline converts instead of stalling.
Responsible-AI questions now arrive with every deal, and slow answers cost you the quarter.
I get your governance and your evidence in order and into a form your sales team can hand over, so diligence shortens the cycle instead of stretching it.
Every new customer turns into a custom build, so growth costs you more than it earns.
I design the configuration, onboarding, and training so a rollout repeats, and your cost to serve falls as you add customers instead of climbing.
If you deploy AgeTech
You are about to commit real budget and a multi-year contract on the strength of a demo.
I evaluate the products the way you would with a product team of your own: what each one does in your setting, what it costs you to run, and where the liability sits if it goes wrong.
The pilot has to answer to your board, not just please the people in the room.
We agree the measures before it starts, in hours returned to staff and cost per resident, so the decision to scale rests on numbers you can defend.
You bought the technology, and the savings never showed up in the budget.
Technology on its own does not release cost. I redesign the service around it, which tasks move and which roles change, so the efficiency lands where you can count it.
Expertise
Research, Strategy & UX Design
AI raises hard questions about quality, control, and whether anyone will use what you build. I settle them with research, quick prototypes, and testing with the people who decide the product's fate: older adults across a range of sight, hearing, movement, and memory, the family and care staff around them, and every role that touches it. Holding the work to the WCAG guidelines is part of that, not a pass at the end. Learning this now costs a fraction of learning it after rollout.
Service Design
I map your service as it works today against where you want it to go, then show you the gaps and a short plan to close them, starting with what matters most. The money is usually won or lost in the work around the product: the configuration, the handoffs, and the training, whether you are rolling it out to customers or absorbing it into your own operation.
AI Governance & Risk Assessment
I build governance that draws on the ISO 42001 and ISO 42005 standards, and run risk reviews that weigh the technical checks and the real-world use together. Bolting AI on and moving to the next thing is what creates the expensive kind of rework: the version that fails an evaluation, stalls a deal, or has to be unpicked after it has reached residents. Done in order, it holds up, and you have the answers a buyer, a regulator, or an investor will ask for.
Engagements also draw on conversation design, human-AI interaction, strategy across business and consumer products, measuring how an experience performs over time, evaluation that includes older adults of every ability and stands up to an audit, stakeholder alignment, workshops, and talks. The specialized terms on this page are explained in plain language in the glossary.
Experience
I have spent three decades in UX strategy, research, and design. Moving into AI ethics, responsible AI, and AI governance was not a pivot. It is the same commitment to the person on the other side of the screen, now that the screen can make decisions of its own. Today I am a Certified AI & Algorithm Auditor.
I care most about the users that careless technology serves worst: older adults and the people who care for them.
I am 65 myself. In work meant to include older adults, that turns out to matter.
More about me, including where I speak and what shapes the work.
Clients and industries
The rigor I built on enterprise and regulated work is what I bring to AgeTech and caregiving today. That experience spans healthcare and pharma, finance and insurance, consumer goods and manufacturing, education, information services, and aviation.
- Bloomberg
- Coca-Cola
- Cardinal Health
- Walgreens-Boots Alliance
- Dell-EMC
- JP Morgan
- US Bank
- Ally Bank
- Allstate
- State Farm
- NetApp
- Houghton Mifflin
- Inspira Financial
- Comscore
- Sentient Jet
- Independence Tube
- UIC
- Actuate
- Anthology (Campus Management)
- Ex Libris Group
I also work closely with startups. Much of that is helping founders think strategically and work on their business, not in it: shaping products that attract investors and keep customers.
Credentials
- Certification
Certified AI & Algorithm Auditor
Verify the badge on Credly.
- Award
A UTI Story: Journey Mapping Methodology & Improving Continuity of Care
Issued by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
- Patent
“Systems and methods for supporting a testing environment for a website”
US 10,002,393
- Books
Several on experience design and prototyping
Most recently Exploring Experience Design, an introduction to the field for students weighing it as a career.
Built in the open
What I bring to your product is not improvised for the engagement. It comes from two places I build and test in the open, with a standing group of collaborators who keep the work honest: gerontologists and allied health professionals, hands-on caregivers, AgeTech founders, and other advisors.
Responsible AgeTech
I founded and run the field's open resource for responsible AI in aging: governance guides, state regulation trackers, and working frameworks. The approach I bring to your product is the one the industry is converging on, tested in the open rather than invented for the engagement.
AgeTech Studio
My design and evaluation practice for aging-focused products. The research methods and AI patterns I would put to work on your product are developed and proven here, so you get a method with a track record instead of improvisation.
I also founded and organize the Responsible AgeTech conference, and I present on responsible AI and AgeTech at industry conferences and as a guest lecturer in university classrooms. Where I have spoken.
Articles
Here is how the principles become real work. Each piece is a practical technique for AgeTech products, written plainly so you can use it. I share them so you can see how I think before we talk.
Guide to Error Messages & User Guidance in AgeTech UX
When something goes wrong, an older adult should never be left feeling at fault. This is about writing error messages and guidance that stay calm, say plainly what happened, and show the next step. The goal is to help someone recover and carry on.
Read the full piece on LinkedIn
Ethical Consent Design for AgeTech: A UX Guide
Consent should be a real choice, not a box you click to make a screen go away. This walks through consent flows that explain what they ask for, in plain words, and make declining as easy as agreeing. Honesty is the whole point.
Read the full piece on LinkedIn
Ethical Subscription UX for AgeTech Products & Services
A subscription should be as easy to leave as it was to join. This covers pricing, renewals, and cancellation handled without dark patterns or hidden traps, so trust holds after the sale. What is fair for the user tends to be good for the business too.
Read the full piece on LinkedIn
Inside Social Companion Robots
A close look at social companion robots for older adults, and the questions they raise. Always-on microphones, facial recognition, and data kept for years put a vulnerable person at real risk. The piece follows how the data actually moves and argues for consent, transparency, and accountable design, with ISO 42001 as the backbone.
Read the full piece on Responsible AgeTech
Managing AI Conversations in AgeTech Apps
When a product talks back, the person has to stay in control. This is about designing AI conversations that are clear about what they are, honest about what they do not know, and ready to hand off to a human when it matters. For older adults, a confident wrong answer is worse than no answer.
Read the full piece on LinkedIn
Engagement
Art & Tech is a company, run for profit like yours, so an engagement runs like the B2B relationship it is: clear scope, an NDA where it is needed, and a contract before any work starts. Nothing surprising, and nothing hidden. Here is the shape of it.
- 1
A first conversation
You tell me about the product and the people it serves, or the decision in front of you. I tell you plainly whether and how I can help, and if I am not the right fit, I say so.
- 2
NDA, scope, and contract
If it is a fit, we sign an NDA where confidentiality calls for it, then I scope the work: what we are doing, the timeline you want, and what it costs. We shape that into a statement of work (SOW), and I work under your company's standard contract. Nothing begins until that is in place.
- 3
The work
Most engagements take one of two shapes: a scoped project with agreed deliverables and a timeline, or a fractional retainer for ongoing, part-time advisory.
- 4
When the work needs more than me
I do the work myself. When it needs skills or hours I do not have, you hire them and I help you choose. For a bounded piece, occasionally one specialist I trust, named and priced before they start. I do not assemble teams on your behalf.
- 5
No lock-in
You keep me because the work earns it, not because a contract traps you. A retainer ends when it stops serving you.
On time and money: I do not put a number on the work early. A real estimate comes once I understand it and the timeline you want, and how the two fit together, after an NDA if the project calls for one. I would rather price it fairly than guess. The full details, how NDAs, contracts, ownership, and billing work, are on How I work.
Connect
Tell me about the product you are building or the decision in front of you, and I will tell you plainly whether and how I can help.
or email ezra@artandtech.com
Booking opens Calendly’s scheduler here, along with its cookies. Chicago time (CT).