Skills all UX professionals need in an AI world
Most of us are already using AI tools every day, but what else will UX professionals need to do to make sure we survive and thrive in an AI world?
Here are the skills I think we should all be focusing on.
Skill 1: Augmented working
“[the ability to] automate the routine and mundane elements of your work, freeing up your time to concentrate on the more complex or human-centric side of your role”
It makes sense that the first step of operating effectively in an AI-dominated environment is learning how to work with AI. Forbes recently predicted that augmented working would be one of the most in-demand skills by 2030.
So what does that look like for UX? Probably quite similar to what you’re already doing. UX Researchers use transcribe and collaboration tools like Otter.ai, UX Writers use Google Docs and Grammarly, UX Designers rely on the AI features in Figma and Sketch. And there’s so much more to explore!
AI will take us in many weird and wonderful directions over the next few years. What’s clear is that the UXers who will thrive during that time are those who have kept up with developments and use AI to improve their own performance.
Skill 2: Emotional intelligence
Emotions are messy. Just like the humans who have them; emotions are unpredictable, hard to control, subject to rapid changes and difficult to accurately categorise. This means that emotional intelligence is one of the last facets of AI likely to develop.
Emotional intelligence or EQ represents the ability to identify, understand, control and use our emotions to build better relationships with others. Happily for most UX professionals: understanding and utilising emotion is a fundamental part of the job we’re already doing.
Just like any other skill, EQ can be learned. UX professionals looking to develop their EQ should focus on:
- Self-management (remaining in control of your emotions)
- Self-awareness (understanding what you’re feeling (and why))
- Social awareness (understanding what other people are feeling (and why))
- Relationship management (using your EQ to improve your relationships)
UX professionals with highly developed EQ will be able to use the augmented working mentioned above to enhance their skills and fill in the areas AI is lacking.
Skill 3: Critical thinking
If we’re going to excel in an AI-dominated world, we need to be able to think critically about the information and insights AI provides. AI-enthusiast and associate professor Fredrik Portin believes that the challenge before us isn’t that AI exists, it’s that we haven’t yet trained ourselves to think critically about what it produces.
Most of us already use critical thinking in our UX work. We evaluate new feature proposals and weigh the balance of how they will impact our users. We review user insights and ask ourselves if the solution proposed by a user is actually the solution that will most benefit them. If we’re part of a fully-functional UX department we even apply critical thinking to our own work in regular retrospectives.
Adapting our critical thinking to an AI-dominated world requires us to dramatically extend the scope of our understanding. We need to understand how the AI we work with uses data, how it reaches conclusions, why it prioritises certain information and the intentions and biases of the people who built it.
Skill 4: Ethical fluency
It’s not a coincidence that AI acceleration is happening at a time when humans in the workforce are facing more complex problems than ever before. We need AI to help us manage the vast amount of information available to us and to make fast, accurate decisions.
The thing is, AI brings its own ethical challenges and if we don’t understand the impact of the AI-enhanced decisions we’re making, we can’t make good decisions. Part of working with AI is understanding these challenges and being able to respond in thoughtful, informed ways.
UX teams have traditionally acted as the conscience of their Product and Tech teams, a role which is only going to expand and become more complex over the coming years. Matthew Askari provides a primer on the challenges facing us, including the need to engage with the ethical implications of algorithmic bias, data privacy and the wider social impact of AI.
This broadens the scope of ethical challenges usually faced by UX professionals, and yet it’s a challenge most of us are already equipped to tackle. Becoming ethically fluent in AI is an extension of the skills many of us have been honing for years.
Skill 5: UX
What a twist! Or, if you’ve read this far, maybe not. Creating user-friendly-platforms is already important, and can you imagine what’s going to happen when, thanks to AI, the majority of available jobs are tech jobs?
Writer Bernard Marr explains: “[the ability] to make technology intuitive and accessible to anyone, even if they aren’t used to working with technology… will be particularly relevant as we move further into the era of low-code/no-code platforms.”
Of course this doesn’t mean we can all just go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this AI stuff to blow over.
Staying up-to-date with developments in UX, making an effort to learn UX-related skills outside our job roles, understanding how AI can enhance our work and actively contributing to AI-fuelled projects at work will make the difference between career success and stagnation.
