photo by Greg Rakozy (Unsplash)

I recently had the opportunity to take part in a panel discussion on the intersection of UX and AI. It was really fun. I got to meet some really smart people (Alex Candelas, Jon Peterson, Tcheilly Nunes) and we had a really interesting and engaging discussion about how AI is impacting the world of product design, and by extension, the digital world we all inhabit. You can watch the panel discussion here.

Designers absolutely have a huge role to play in AI — how it will be developed, productized, and introduced into user experiences. From that panel, I wanted to share 4 things I’m thinking about.

#1: AI will change everything. But the designer’s job will not change.

Everyone is predicting that AI will change everything in the next few years. It’s already upended so much, finding applications in healthcare, finance, retail, and media. Companies everywhere are rushing to add AI capabilities (often before figuring out what/why they need AI for their business). Data scientists and machine learning engineers are in high demand as LLM are developed and vast amounts of data are being crunched to power these systems. It’s all engineering-intensive and technical and certainly opaque to the uninitiated. How can a designer make a meaningful contribution to all of this?

By doing their job. A designer’s job isn’t to make something look aesthetically pleasing, stylized or beautiful. A designer’s job is to understand the user, understand the problems they face and the things they hope to accomplish. A designer’s job is to define the problem (correctly) and design solutions that address that problem in an effective and desirable way. And so it is with AI. The designer must figure out how AI can be used to solve real user needs (or not when AI isn’t the right solution). Everyone’s integrating AI into everything with little to no innovative ideas of how to apply it. Designers are needed to craft solutions that matter to users. They’re not designing chatbots. They’re designing experiences.

#2: AI is a tool, not the solution.

AI is a very powerful technology that seems to just be getting started. Its power and capabilities seem to grow exponentially every year. Companies are racing to add AI to everything, stand up some product enhanced by AI (and then market the hell out of the fact that they “have AI”).

Users don’t care about this in any meaningful way. Maybe they’ll try your product out of curiosity, but this is not likely to lead towards regular usage. AI is not the point for users because AI isn’t the solution to the problem they have or task they need to accomplish. AI can possibly help in addressing that need, but as a means to an end.

It’s the designer’s responsibility to figure out how to integrate AI into a product or experience that is effective and desirable for the user.

#3: AI should be invisible, not human.

ChatGPT can be fun to interact with. Alexa can be genuinely helpful in certain situations. Siri, not so much. All this effort to create AI that is more human, that you can chat with feels to me to be a wrong path, possibly a dead end. AI as it currently exists cannot become “more human.”

AI is trained on large data sets. It identifies patterns in those data sets and then offers up what it predicts will be the next sequence in that pattern. It cannot learn to be empathetic or creative or curious. Any behaviors it exhibits are merely programmed responses that a developer created to make AI appear more human. But it’s not real. For me at least, every time an AI-powered product provides a “human-like response” it feels fake and insincere. The contours of the response immediately become rough and jaggest, the illusion dissipates.

AI seems to be most effective when it’s not noticed, when it can’t be seen but the results it powers are desired. When Spotify plays a string of songs you hadn’t heard before but really love. When Netflix recommends a movie that turns out, you really like. When Google answers the question you typed into the search bar at the top of the results page rather than have you click into a page and find the result.

When AI creates a seemingly auto-magical experience — the answer or outcome you desire without having to go through the steps to achieve it yourself — the technology seems to be most effective. These should be the types of experiences we’re trying to build with AI.

#4: Be curious.

This is probably the most important thought I have on this topic.

AI is a new technology and it will impact and transform so many industries and experiences. It will be used to create unique experiences that we can’t even imagine today. So start getting familiar with it.

Play around with chatbots and image generators. Use ChatGPT to generate a list of ideas for blog posts. Have it create a first draft of an important email you need to send but have been putting off. Use it to generate a list of user interview questions and then refine them. Experiment with different prompts to get a better understanding of what’s effective. Read interesting Medium and LinkedIn posts about AI.

As much as you can, immerse yourself in AI tools and the discussion around it. By becoming familiar with AI, you’ll gain a better understanding of its capabilities and limitations. The edges of what is possible and what is not (today). This will position you to be able to leverage AI in the future experiences you will design and build.