UXPerience Talk: Shaping Gen AI Experiences
Posted on November 7th, 2024
I recently spoke at UXperience Seattle that focused on how to create AI products that truly help people while being trustworthy, ethical, reliable, and always remembering the human behind the screen
As designers, we know we should focus on people’s needs. But with AI being so powerful, it’s easy to get caught up in all the cool things it can do. Jason reminded us that we need to look past the clicks and tasks to understand why people actually need our products.
Think about it: When we’re excited about what AI can do, it’s tempting to build something that shows off its capabilities. But that’s not always what people need or want.
A key difference: AI as “Assistant” vs. AI as “Help”
There is an important distinction in how we think about AI when integrating it into products:
• AI as Assistant: Making AI the star that takes control and makes all the decisions
• AI as Help: Using AI to guide people and help them make better decisions themselves
This small shift in thinking makes a big difference. Instead of creating an AI assistant that does everything, we should focus on providing helpful guidance that makes people better at what they do.
Practical tips for designers on working with AI:
➡️ Leveraging AI in the design process. GenAI can significantly speed up research and help generate early ideas. We can use it to analyze data more efficiently, but always need to remember to validate work with stakeholders and real users. The key is to keep iterating based on feedback to improve results.
➡️ Expanding your skillset. GenAI is changing what different roles can do. Designers can now easily learn basic programming and build interactive prototypes. We can all become “design technologists” or wirte code like a software engineer. The possibilities are limitless – GenAI helps us expand our skills beyond traditional role definitions.
➡️ Highlighting core capabilities in design portfolio. While tools and technology will constantly change, and our design mockups and prototypes may get outdated, strong design thinking never goes out of style. What matters is showing how we solve problems rather than just highlighting which tools we’ve mastered. Our core design capabilities remain valuable even as the technology landscape shifts.
➡️ Finding the right balance. I learned this lesson firsthand while building a React app – trusting AI completely led to problems that required starting over. We need to use AI as a collaborative tool while continuing to develop our fundamental skills and maintain our professional judgment. It’s about finding that sweet spot between leveraging AI’s capabilities and applying our own expertise.
