Day 104: UX & Design Trends in 2020 — Part 4: Emerging Tech Design
Whether you’re reading newspaper, or browsing feeds on Apple News, Reddit, LinkedIn, or other source, it’s hard to dismiss the abundant news about AI, Blockchain, and other once-perceived-buzzword that are gradually becoming part of standard options of technological solutions. So, what are the related UX Design trends in 2020? Let’s take a look:
AI Design
Without going through a whole lecture of “What is/isn’t AI”, or “is AI going to cause doomsday”, AI is now something easy to reach when creating solution in all types of services. The main benefits of AI includes: 1) Predictions: analyze patterns and predict what might happen next, especially valuable for business insights; 2) Automation: use algorithm to set trigger and execute automatically; especially good for reduce human labor; 3) Optimization: streamline process and automate multiple steps into single task, especially good for reduce inefficiency and human errors.
While being a powerful tool, it’s not always easy to know how to design when AI’s involved. If the AI is used for decision making, certain AI works like a blackbox, and there’s now way to know how the decision is made. Therefore the design principles is around: 1) optimizing the data input to eliminate human bias, 2) finding the best adoption that creates user value, and 3) optimize the output to be user friendly. To learn more, here’s Google’s AI design principles.
Blockchain
In the age of fake news and distrust, authenticity becomes more valuable than ever. For example, fake celebrity branded cosmetics which might have contained urine and E. coli in the ingredient have caused users injuries. How do we know if the product is real, clean, or safe? Blockchain is here to help. The nature of immutability makes blockchain tech one of the ideal solutions when authenticity of the product matters to the consumers/users. Use cases can be found in high quality rice to serve to Pope and to deal with climate change.
Although Blockchain tech sounds like something that can be beneficial, there are underlying knowledge required in order to adopt it seamlessly through design. For example, there are hidden process that’s not obvious to users, especially comparing to traditional server storage solutions. Therefore it’s important to make it clear the system status, so that users won’t get confused.
Also, due the the data authentication process, there are time-delay so for the required procedure to process. Therefore, the design principles need to alter in order to allow users understand what’s going on and prepare them mentally. There are some good guidance around designing for blockchain technology:
Conclusion
Lots of emerging technology are about data processing, transaction, and storage. Although these processes might be running in the background, there are significant impact on user experience due to the different expectation comparing to traditional tech. It’s important for UX practitioners to understand the differences, and form proper design principles in order to catch potential pain points to create an intuitive and user friendly product/ service.
Thanks for reading! Do you have thoughts around UX & Design Trends? I’d like to hear from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
