How learning UX can help us save the world!
Sci-fi movies have always given us a glimpse of the future technology and though most of it has fascinated us, it has also given us the terrifying idea called ‘robot apocalypse’. The thought of AI taking over the world and destroying/enslaving mankind, portrayed by movie series like ‘The Terminator’ and ‘The matrix’ have horrified us about the possibility of such a dark future.
That being said, we’ve always put away this idea, by comforting ourselves with the thought that such an event can take place only in a very distant future, and by that time, we would be well equipped to handle such a situation, if it arises. But with the technology advancing really rapidly in recent times, it seems like the future isn’t as distant as we tell ourselves. Nowadays not just our computers, but all of our devices are getting more and more smarter, and though this has done nothing but made our lives easy, it has lead to this huge gap being formed between us and our devices.
For example we use Google search for almost everything, from some serious work related research to searching random things just to kill time. And more or less every time, it gives us exactly what we’re looking for. Even more amazing is that it also gives us suggestions to what we might want to search, even before we type the entire query! Facebook suggests us new friends, it also gives us suggestions regarding how we could interact with our current friends. And it keeps getting scarier, with the new Google Allo messenger suggesting us replies which fit perfectly in our conversation! But does anyone of us know how AI’s come up with what we’re exactly looking for? Majority of us don’t have the slightest idea about what exactly was the reason behind it thinking that the suggestion is the right fit for us.
And the rate with which our technology is advancing, it won’t be long before we completely stop understanding our devices. Which, according to me, would be the beginning of the feared apocalypse.
But, as we know the best way of understanding someone or something is to communicate with them, and that’s where UX comes in. User experience doesn’t just mean improving the ease of use, it helps us better understand the software we’re using, while helping the software understand what we’re trying to do. It is like a bridge which fills the gap between we humans and the machines by various means such as alerts, notifications and short descriptions, informing us of what state the system is in and what it’s expecting out of us.
Hence improving the interaction between two entities helps both ways, we’re not just helping the humans better understand the machine, we’re also helping the machine getting better data from the user, thus improving the two-way communication between them.
Thus I would conclude by saying that UX really plays a crucial role reducing the widening gap between two highly intellectual beings, the humans and the machines(AI), in-turn making them better understand each other and eliminating even the slightest risk of a ‘robot apocalypse’ happening in the future. And therefore, learning UX is essential for helping mankind, not just in the short term, but more so in the long run, thus making us UX designers nothing less than superheroes. So, to all my fellow UX designers, let’s get back to saving the world, one wire-frame at a time.
