Design at the Heart of AI
The Making of Conveyor AI’s Digital Presence
Co-written by Sara Falkson, Data and AI UX Designer, and Angel Montesdeoca, CEO of Conveyor AI
Background
Building AI applications is hard — it’s expensive, time consuming, and very technical. With Conveyor AI, what previously took weeks can now be completed in mere minutes. Conveyor AI’s low-code platform allows users to connect ML models from industry leaders like Google and Microsoft as well as IBM Watson. You choose the model and Conveyor AI bridges the gap between inputs, AI models, and outputs. It then features a one-click “Deploy” to take care of all the DevOps. As a result, you can just focus on building great end-to-end AI-enabled solutions.
Research
Design is at the heart of building Conveyor AI and making AI accessible. Our design team leveraged Enterprise Design Thinking (EDT) principles and practices to create a continuous cycle of observing, reflecting and building. We started by conducting purposeful generative and evaluative research that included user interviews, competitive analysis and use cases breakdowns for AI applications.
Throughout our research, we noticed that there is a lack of AI applications devoted to people who are just beginning their AI journey. There are limited resources to understand the use cases of AI applications and cast the building process as intimidating in existing platforms.
Define
We discovered that users needed to justify the investment in an AI application builder before they would commit to purchase. That’s why the UX research team was so committed to understanding the nature of and crafting a great “discovery” experience for users. To create a strong first impression, our design team built an engaging and playful product landing page that would break down the intimidating barriers that most AI applications share.
We created User Journey Maps, As-Is Scenarios and Empathy Maps to lead us to our aspirational goal for Conveyor AI (our “Hill”), which is composed of a who, what, and wow:
A low-code developer is inspired to try Conveyor AI within 5 minutes of browsing the website.
Ideate & Prototype
Putting pen to virtual paper, our design team used the insights we gleaned from our research to craft various low-fidelity prototypes for a product landing page for Conveyor AI.
We created 12 separate mockups illustrating different ways to visualize the power of Conveyor AI. We focused on the hierarchy of information, the voice and tone of the content, and the relevant call-to-action buttons all while keeping our user’s needs at the forefront of each design.
We conducted 4 interviews with “Sponsor users” (a program that enables external clients to be involved throughout the lifecycle of the product) to test the usability and accessibility of the redesigned Conveyor AI website. One key differentiation between our prototypes was Conveyor AI’s brand identity: did we want to come across as high-tech and futuristic or playful and engaging?
After collaborating with our design team and conducting A-B testing with our sponsor users, we concluded that a colorful and playful interface would craft a delightful and inclusive Discover experience.
Launch
On October 4th, 2022 we officially launched our Conveyor AI website! After sharing the ConveyorAI.com link on LinkedIn and IBM Slack channels, we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback on the site with nearly 2000 impressions. Upon posting a link to the website, hundreds of people joined the waitlist and are actively waiting for Conveyor AI’s official release!
Conclusion
At Conveyor AI and IBM, our animating principle as designers and UX researchers is to transform complex business needs into delightful experiences. Now that our site is live, our team has been hard at work launching our AI orchestration tool, which will officially release in February 2023. With Conveyor AI, we’ve proven that design and UX research infused into a highly-technical product can go a long way to making AI accessible and scalable for all people.
I am extremely excited to be apart of a design team that is committed to infusing designing into every decision. With guidance form IBM’s Hyper Blue Incubator, Patterns, and the Enterprise Design Thinking process, we have been able to help users realize real return on investment by building powerful AI applications, easily and effectively.
Sara Falkson is a UX Designer at IBM based in San Jose, California. Angel Montesdeoca is the CEO of Conveyor AI based in New York, New York. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
