UX and AI: The new best friends
The recent explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was caused by the convergence of the Big Data and the augmentation of computational power. In this article, we are going to talk about AI in the broad sense: including Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition. We will take a look at a few examples of how AI is being used today and why it might be User Experience’s new best friend (UX) when it comes to humanizing the customer experience and building a smart product.
AI is not where you expect it
Today, when we speak of AI, we tend to imagine a cyborg from the latest sci-fi movie. A good example would be Ava in Ex-Machina.
Given this image we have of AI, we’re right to say : “Oh God! Siri or Google now are so far from this…”.
Intelligence in computer science is directly associated with speech and conversation. So, yes our smartphones may be a long way from having the discussion of our dreams, but they are definitely… smart.
AI is in all your electronic devices: your phone, your tablet, your watch, your TV, even your fridge is probably smart. It is just not smart the way you expect it. It exists through microinteractions which make the difference between a product we love and one we just use.
“Every time you change a setting, sync your data or devices, set an alarm, pick a password, log in, set a status message, or favorite or “like” something, you are engaging with a microinteraction.”
Microinteractions by Dan Saffer (O’Reilly).
It personalizes recommendations of applications or movies. You have a news feed created specially for you. Your likes, comments, clicks, even how long you spend on a specific post are fed into Facebook’s artificial brain. All those interactions are powered with some level of AI. Facebook analyzes those patterns, preferences, and behaviors to show you more of what it thinks you’ll like.
Facebook learns your habits, your preferences, your tastes … to simplify all the actions you have to take and give you a unique User Experience.
AI is a matter of UX above all
“Great microinteractions design requires understanding the people who use the product, what they are trying to accomplish, and steps they need to takes.”
Microinteractions by Dan Saffer (O’Reilly) — Foreward by Don Norman.
A great UX continually learns from its users to give them a more human experience, intuitive and as positive as possible. It tends to minimize all errors and frustrations in an experience with a product or interface. Just like AI. It’s the main base for an intelligence, learning from mistakes. It will not make the same mistake again, it memorizes experiences.
It can thus reduce frustration, avoid errors and plan actions. This is not AI for the sake of it, but AI as a part of a UX strategy for business, for users and for developers.
A matter of strategy
“User Experience strategy lies at the intersection of UX design and business strategy. It is practice that, when done empirically, provides a much better chance of successful digital product than just crossing your fingers, designing some wireframes, and then writing a bunch of code”
UX Strategy by Jamie Levy (O’Reilly)
Intelligent machines fed with Big Data will get good at anything involving the processing of large amounts of information. We need a lot of information and research when we build a new process, a new product. We need clarity when we seek our future users, because we need to find those who love our product, which will return and become ambassadors. To accomplish this we need a killer UX and some AI interactions. Only then will we succeed in making our users and developers happy!
And tomorrow?
For now we can only make small parts of a product intelligent by iterating and collecting data on specific interactions. But we can hope that tomorrow the entire product will be smart enough to provide a unique experience for each user.
A product that is built thanks to you and learns at the same time as you.
Jasmine ANTEUNIS– Recast.AI
This post was originally published at https://blog.recast.ai/ux-and-ai-the-new-best-friends/
