UX Principles for Designing with AI Products
Technology is advancing, and with it, so is UX Design. That being said, what are some principles that we, as UX Designers, can consider to effectively use the new tools at our disposal to aid our design process?
Ever find yourself lost in the whirlwind of AI tools, wondering how to tame the digital beast and make your designs truly sing? Well, you’re not alone. As AI continues to weave its way into every nook and cranny of our digital world, it’s high time we chat about the principles guiding its use in UX design.
Picture this: you’re on a quest to create the slickest, most user-friendly interface known to humanity. But with AI lurking around every corner, how do you ensure your design journey doesn’t turn into a wild goose chase? Fear not, my friend. I’ve got your back.
In fact, I wrote the introduction above using (the now tamed) ChatGPT with the following prompt: “write a slightly casual introduction for an article describing principles to consider for using ai tools for ux design” along with minimal edits from yours truly.
AI can be daunting, however, in order to face this new technology, we need to be prepared to use it to our advantage. In this article, I’ll be outlining a few principles to help you utilize different AI tools in your design work.
The Principles
The following are some principles to consider when designing with AI:
▹ Be Specific
▹ Trust your judgement
▹ It’s not UX without iteration
▹ Expect the Unexpected
▹ Don’t Be Afraid of Change
These principles are by no means the be-all end-all principles that you need to follow in order to be successful with AI. However, they are guides for my own use of AI that have previously yielded successful results. Considering this, if you’re every struggling with how to approach using AI in your own work, these principles should be able to aid you.
Be Specific
Writing prompts seems really easy. If you want to create a home icon, you could easily type in “home icon” in AI tool such as Magician for Figma and sure, it would probably spit out some nice home icons:
However, what if you want other icons for your interface? Imagine you wanted a search icon too, so you input “search icon”:
The icons are… very different. They wouldn’t really work together in an interface — it would look too inconsistent.
So how can we fix this? By being specific. If we change the prompt to “circled home icon” and “circled search icon,” they look a lot more like a set rather than mismatched icons.
Some of these icons could definitely be paired and effectively used in an interface. The iconography is more consistent and the icons themselves are confined to a circle, just as the prompt suggested.
By being more specific, the AI is able to more closely reflect what you want it to output. Just like how you can’t read someone else’s mind, AI can’t read yours, so it’s important to specify what you want it to output in order to receive the results you’re hoping for.
Trust Your Judgement
AI seems like magic. For example, you can input what you want from a design and it can output a wireframe in seconds. How do we compete with magic? It’s too daunting.
The keyword here though, is “seems”. AI isn’t some sort of magic that can create the perfect wireframe in seconds. It’s definitely efficient, however, it often makes mistakes. That’s where human designers come in.
Rather than viewing AI as a complicated and magical invention, it’s better to use it as a tool to streamline your own design process. For example, if you ask AI to create a home screen for a ticketing app, it’ll be able to spit one out in a matter of seconds. It’s quick, and it’s able to come up with something. However, what it produces doesn’t necessarily mean that should be the end of your design process.
UX design is backed by hours of research and a close understanding of what your product’s user needs are, something that AI lacks. Thus, it’s vital to take a closer look at what it creates to ensure that 1) it’s actually a cohesive design and 2) that it’s something that would work well for your users.
Your next steps are dictated by your own judgement calls surrounding whether or not what AI has created meets your criteria and your users’ needs.
It’s Not UX Without Iteration
As UX designers, I’m sure that we’re all familiar with iteration here. Created a product? Great! Now test it, fix it, and repeat. Working with AI is not all that different.
If a prompt doesn’t work the way you would like it to the first time you try to input something, then alter it and try again. Fiddle aruond with the wording until you’re happy with the result.
For example, say you would like a home icon in a white circle. Your first prompt was “circled home icon”. Although you got results with home icons with circles, all of the circles were black and the homes white. Next you might try “home icon in circle”, running into a similar issue. Your next iteration of the prompt is “black home icon in white circle” and finally you get the results you’re looking for.
Working with AI is a lot of trial and error until you’re able to get the result you want. It’s important to be patient and work with the prompt until you’re able to get what you’re looking for, or in other words, iterate on the prompt until you’re happy with the result.
Expect the Unexpected
Sometimes AI doesn’t like the terms you use in the prompt and gives you something different than what you were hoping for. AI, just like you and me, cannot read minds. That’s why it’s important to expect it to output something that might not look exactly how you would like it to look.
Imagine you’ve got a clear image of how you would like a wireframe for a social media home page to look. The logo at the top, posts that show up as you scroll. There would be options to like, comment, and message people too. However, when you feed the input to AI, it’s completely different. All of the features are jumbled and it just looks a little odd.
The first output you get likely won’t be perfect. It’s important to be aware of that and prepare to figure out what to do next in order to make what’s given to you match your expectations.
Don’t Be Afraid of Change
AI likely won’t give you the output you’re hoping for from the get-go. Luckily there’s a way to remedy this: change.
There are a couple of ways to go about changing your approach in order to come up with a better result. You could either change your prompt to be more specific to what you want, or you could take a stab at changing the output directly. AI provides you with a framework or a guide for you to alter until you’re pleased with the result. At the end of the day, you are the one with the most knowledge about your users, and you are the one with control over the design — don’t be afraid to exercise that control.
Conclusion
Let’s go back to the initial prompt I used to write the introduction of this article. Of course, it wasn’t used to create a design, however it does utilize the same principles I find important when interacting with AI tools.
“write a slightly casual introduction for an article describing principles to consider for using ai tools for ux design”
▹ Be Specific
I made sure to be specific with the prompt. Oftentimes, ChatGPT will output an overly formal and, frankly, oddly toned dialogue (in fact, that’s what happened with my first iteration of the prompt). I wanted the article to have a more casual tone, but not overly casual tone so I made sure to specify in order to receive an output I was happy with.
▹ Trust your judgement
I could have gone with the first iteration I had of this prompt — in fact, that might have been easier. But I knew the tone I wanted this article to have, so I trusted my best judgement and continued iterating and tweaking until I got something I liked.
▹ It’s not UX without iteration
I went through 3 iterations with this prompt. Initially, I asked, “write an introduction for an article describing principles to consider for using ai tools for ux design”. This outputted a formal (yet somewhat eery) response.
Then I changed it to, “write a casual introduction for an article describing principles to consider for using ai tools for ux design”. This outputted an overly casual introduction.
Finally, I changed it to the current prompt which outputted the current introduction to the article.
▹ Expect the Unexpected
As I approached the introduction, I knew I might not like what I see ChatGPT output. Unfortunately, I was right, but luckily I was prepared. I knew what I wanted out of the article’s introduction and was effectively able to adapt because I knew that the AI’s first response might not be exactly what I wanted it to be.
▹ Don’t Be Afraid of Change
Even though I was pretty happy with the prompt’s response, I still ended up changing the output slightly until it fit the tone of the article better and best suited my interest for the introduction.
The moral of the story is that AI is by no means a solution to all of your design problems, but it’s a tool to learn and incorporate into your design process. With the principles I’ve outlined, you’ll be able to tame the previously daunting beast that is AI.