The AI Summit New York is billed as the world’s largest gathering connecting the Artificial Intelligence community to businesses. Tech companies, consultants, and field experts from across the country talk about their latest and greatest advancements. While AI has been around for decades businesses are now grasping how they may be able to apply it to very real business problems in an effort to create a competitive advantage in their respective markets.
Does AI have anything to do with the user experience? Yes, of course it does—it actually has everything to do with it. How? Designers are deciders of what, how, when, where, and why information is presented to an audience. Design provides the pathway to answer the users questions. The shorter that path the more satisfying the results. AI has the potential to make that path very short and deeply meaningful. Here are a few takeaways from summit and the state of AI in business.
AI has a branding problem
Decades of pop-cultural references have spurred fears that all AI technology is the same, that it will be taking away our jobs and taking over our society—or even worse. While anything is possible a more rational take is to simply look at it as a tool to find patterns within vast amounts of information. Machine Learning allows us to simply analyze patterns in data. Google’s Chief Decision Scientist Cassie Koztrhov describes AI as a machine that “explains with examples”. Show it pictures and it will discover patterns that humans may not be able to do on their own. Once patterns are recognized, Natural Language Understanding (NLU) can make meaning out of the unstructured language. Natural Language Processing (NLP) will then take that unstructured language and derive insights from the sentiment that would take way too long for humans to do at the same scale.
Gavin Michael, Head of Technology for Citi described how they consider it as “augmented intelligence” where they are giving tools to employees to do their jobs better. He talked about how behavioral analytics will take the friction out of interacting with the bank. Humans are still required for the job, but having extra information about the customer readily available can conceptually make their experience better. This may be a more practical way to think about it in context to the work you do.
The internet isn’t getting any smaller
As the internet continues to increase in size humans are going to continue to need tools to be able to understand it, filter it, and prioritize the information for what is most meaningful to us. It is the insights we derive from such activities that will allow businesses to make smarter predictions and more accurate decisions that reduces their risk. But it doesn’t mean anything if the data is not presented to the decision-maker in a format that they can’t understand. This is where UX comes in. In order for the data be useful to the decision-maker it must be presented in a format that allows them to understand what it is, where it came from, and how it can help them make a choice.
UX designers job must ask continue to ask questions as they would for any project but in cases where they are building enterprise applications and tools will be used by a narrow audience, the questions must go deeper and understand how they can craft a tool that augments the users behavior and empowers them to do their job better. It all depends of course on who is using the product. An Marketing SVPs’ information needs will be different than that of a customer service agent. Both can benefit from data that gives them insight into the problem they are trying to solve and the context by which the insights are presented make all the difference.
Scale the space between
In order for businesses to grow they must find opportunities in new and underserved markets. These markets take place in the space between larger, more established entities. Analyzing user behavior enables businesses to understand the direction of trends and make predictions that may lead to creating new—and perhaps innovative—products and services. Four largest companies in the world are tech companies, each trying to leverage both large and small communities within their ecosystems.
For businesses to grow it is imperative for them to consistently deliver better customer experiences. Machine learning empowers those organizations to do that at scale. But keep in mind this involves tracking user patterns and mapping their behaviors all in an effort to service them with—what sometimes feels like—an endless conveyor belt of new products. As UX designers it is important to recognize this cycle and be sensitive to user concerns. Each time a user enters their name in an input field, or clicks on a button, they are giving their personal information they are entrusting to the product. Most users don’t think that deeply about it but we should. Tech empires are built by the bricks of each piece of data.
Melissa Boxer, VP, Product Strategy and Customer Success, Adaptive Intelligence emphasizes to “know your why”—which is at the foundational design philosophy. This was echoed in several sessions along with another common theme: start with the problem and not the solution. In other words, be clear about its purpose. Trust is built using the technology in a responsible way. Therefore future products must infuse transparency to earn that trust. Empower users with knowledge and tools to understand that what they are getting is because of what they are giving.
AI will continue to play a major role in the development of products. It is our responsibility as designers to understand how it can be used and why it will make the experience better for the user.