User experience trend in AI.
Don’t put users in the box series for UX and UI designers.
As digital designers, we often create highly specified user flows, but what if a user’s needs diverge from these? Current designs may require a hundred clicks or even preclude the desired outcome entirely. A common question arises: why do some websites still lack a search box? Why do restrictive filters limit user experience when our quest is to enhance it? The rationale behind certain websites can appear obscure, considering our diverse logic and thinking styles.
Picture a highway. A desired restaurant is within your sight, a minute away. Yet, the route options lead you on a labyrinth through multiple streets and turns, culminating in a 30-minute drive. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
If we rethink our design philosophy to ‘open the box’, we pave the way for flexible, unique experiences that cater to individual users. No longer should we confine user experience to predefined categories and limited user journeys. The future lies in personalization, in creating a unique user journey that factors in where they are, who they are, and what they are doing at that moment.
Personalization
We all are unique, and we should create experiences that are special as well, for each of us, I believe personalization is the future, and based on where are you coming from who you are, and what are you doing right now your experience can be uniquely customized. And users should be able to actually create that experience for themselves based on their needs.
Yes, we need to still provide users with an example of the possibilities and guide them through the available functionalities, but even young kids intuitively know how to use technology better than some grown-ups. My seven-year-old knows how to ask better questions of Alexa and Siri than me. I would never think of asking a math problem or correct spelling, but for him it was intuitive. Without hesitation, he asked the right questions and showed me a new way of interacting with technology, that I had never seen doing by myself, so why we are limiting users to our style of thinking? Users should be able to create things that work for them, and their way of thinking not ours. Let’s stop putting users inside of the boxes, with all the technology available today, we can reinvent the experiences today by using data, AI, and imagination.
Insted of force-feeding users a style of thinking or a specific route, we can empower users to shape their own experiences.
Why then, in an era of technological revolution, should we persist in boxing users?
For example, users with disabilities could customize their experiences without compromising usability for aesthetics. Making preferences once, to apply it to all web interactions, even apps.
Imagine the possibilities.
Relying on AI will mean no more dropdown menus, 404 error pages, broken links, limiting filters, and unreadable content.
No more- one design that fits all.
Any service and product must be tailored to the market and the user. Defining general metrics and nonnegotiable design guidelines to keep your brand recognized, but the rest can be all autogenerated in seconds. You can describe how much freedom you want to give users with your product, and the rest can be a new canvas creation of AI. Eliminating the need to choose between usability, desirability, feasibility, and design. With AI and data at our fingertips, while creating the most convenient experience for our users, we might need to decide between linking to partners or keeping users on our platform. That raises new changes to the essence of brand recognition as we know it.
From this, I can see a new need for jobs like “monitoring”, that harnesses AI to inform decisions, yet still allowing for human judgment and real-time adjustments. There are always going to be new trends and needs emerging, moving a lot faster than today.
The simplicity of traffic monitoring in the future will be so beneficial, as in a few seconds you could see the behaviors of the users, which will help you to make the most informed decisions. Will be even more important to ask the right questions, but the future of statistics requires dipper investigation as well as a separate article.
Imagine if users could dictate their browsing preferences just once, and all subsequent experiences auto-update accordingly. The result? A seamless, maximally functional user journey. Soon, we might view websites not as they were designed, but as we prefer to see them, tailored to our behaviors and experiences. Providing coherency and maximum functionality.
Soon we will see websites, not the way they were designed, but the way we prefer to see them.
Reimagining existing services like browsers has been approached by The Browsing Company. The Arc.net browser is the first step in the new wave of personalization. The term “personalized” will take on a new meaning, leading us away from the static and fluid web products of today.
The arc internet allows users to customize visually any webpage. There’s a color picker that lets you change sites from the standard backgrounds you’re used to any color of your preference, as well you can replace the majority of fonts. The “Zap” feature lets you highlight an element of a page that you don’t want to see and just zap it into a black hole. I am working on hiding ads.
Designing for personalization
While we can easily integrate AI into existing solutions and services, the real innovation lies in completely reimagining the user experience. By asking the right questions, we can focus on solving the most worthy problems, even if it requires combining services across multiple platforms.
Take, for example, a user searching for a specific outfit style to be delivered before a wedding. Currently, this journey involves visiting various brands’ websites and comparing styles, sizes, prices, and delivery dates — a time-consuming process filled with considerations and research.
Now, imagine a future where this process takes mere seconds, with all viable options presented in one place, considering style, size, price, and delivery date. This is the potential power of AI, streamlining the user experience and saving precious time. This future is not only possible; it is on the horizon.
Generative AI allows for highly personalized user experiences. UX designers will need to consider how to create designs that adapt to individual user needs and preferences while maintaining consistency and meeting overall business goals. Traditional UX tools like customer journey maps, user flows, site maps, and taxonomy might not be relevant anymore or will be adjusted to fit possibilities of personalization.
Some predictions for the future of UX design:
- Dynamic UX. As AI systems can generate content and even design elements, UX design will become more dynamic. Designers will need to create systems that can handle this dynamism, while still ensuring a coherent and enjoyable user experience.
- Designing for Co-Creation. With generative AI, users might not just be passive consumers of content, but co-creators. UX designers will need to design experiences that support and enhance this co-creative process.
- Increased accessibility. The inclusive design will step in even more, not like a good to have, but must have.
- Ethics. Given that AI has the potential to significantly influence many aspects of our lives, it’s important that ethical guidelines are established to prevent misuse and ensure AI systems promote fairness, safety, and respect for human rights.
Today’s design landscape is enriched with numerous tools leveraging AI to generate UI designs from mere text prompts — a significant advancement that is already proving helpful. However, the horizon of design evolution extends beyond this present utility. In the future, we anticipate moving away from designing on a screen-by-screen basis. Instead, AI will allow us to approach design more holistically, facilitating a seamless user experience across entire platforms, not just individual screens.
It is no longer enough to use one-size-fits-all approaches, any service and product must be tailored to the market and the user. There are countless factors to consider in this proposed experience, including the implications for privacy, security, and brand consistency. This is a springboard for further exploration, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
