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.
Answered before you spend the money finding out.
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.
Expertise
Research, Strategy & UX Design
AI investments fail when user adoption is assumed rather than tested. Usability and market fit are secured before engineering capital is spent by validating rapid prototypes directly with the end-users: older adults of varying abilities, their family networks, and care teams. Accessibility (WCAG) is embedded into the strategic foundation rather than treated as a costly post-launch patch. This approach de-risks development, protects budget, and ensures the final product is actually adopted by the people who determine its success.
Service Design
Software ROI is won or lost in the processes surrounding it. Service design maps the current operational reality against the target future state, exposing critical gaps in configuration, workflow handoffs, and staff training. By optimizing these operational touchpoints, friction is removed from both customer deployments and internal adoption. The result is a prioritized execution plan that bridges the gap between the digital product and the real-world operations required to support it, ensuring the technology actually delivers its intended value.
Product-Led AI Governance
AI governance often stalls as abstract policy. By applying product strategy and design expertise, theoretical compliance is translated into immediate operational value. Whether governance frameworks are firmly established or currently non-existent, this advisory capability anchors them directly within the product experience. Necessary guardrails, such as consent, disclosure, and model limitations, are engineered into the user interface where AI actually meets the user. High-risk gaps are mapped into a strategic roadmap of product adjustments, policy updates, and audit-ready documentation. Aligned with ISO 42001 and 42005, this methodology future-proofs products against emerging regulations and transforms compliance into a competitive sales asset.
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.
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
My expertise is in systems that connect large organizations in healthcare, pharma, finance, and insurance to the businesses and people they serve, where the buyer and the user are rarely the same person and every decision has to hold up to a compliance review. AgeTech has the same shape. A builder sells to a care organization, which puts the product in front of staff and residents. Designing for the split between buyer and user, across every role that touches the system, is what the work below taught me. That experience spans healthcare and pharma, finance and insurance, consumer goods and manufacturing, education, information services, and aviation.
Alongside it, I work with nonprofits: a housing center serving people who are homeless (pro bono), a dementia-care program, and others. Different mindset, different pace, no procurement department. What they teach is how to design with people whose circumstances leave no room for a product that almost works, and that carries straight into AgeTech. Designing for the older adult at the end of the chain is also what the two initiatives further down are for.
- 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
- 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.
Where the method comes from
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
The field's open resource for responsible AI in aging, which I founded and run: governance guides, state regulation trackers, and working frameworks. When I set up governance for your product, the templates come from here, already tested against the questions buyers and regulators ask.
AgeTech Prism
Where I develop and test the research methods and AI interaction patterns before using them on client work. What you get on an engagement has already been tried with older adults and the people around them.
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.
Selected 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
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.
How an engagement runs, from getting started to handover, with how I price and how the work is staffed, is on Working with me.
or email ezra@artandtech.com
Booking opens Calendly’s scheduler here, along with its cookies. Chicago time (CT).