Understanding the relationship between AI and user experience (UX) is crucial for companies that aim to empower their customers and users. This allows them to provide clear computer instructions and receive meaningful, actionable responses. Our previous article discussed the differences between user interface (UI) and UX design. To achieve their business goals, Product UX designers consider all possible user touchpoints within the company.

Learn more- User Experience vs User Interface – Understand the Difference

Let’s say you’re shopping for a Housewarming gift on Amazon vs. shopping on Etsy, which is a marketplace of arts and crafts. On Amazon, you can choose Prime with faster shipping or standard shipping. They packaged your order with an Amazon box and possibly allowed you to return it should there be issues. Meanwhile, Etsy’s sellers would ship their products to you with their own packaging. Some of them put a Thank You card and add a sticker on it. You can order gifts on Amazon and Etsy, but the two stores offer different customer experiences.

Examples of how we use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and User Experience today

Tesla’s cars use advanced data science where the computer in the cars can become self-driving cars with a 360-degree camera, 160 meters forward-facing radar, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. With Edge AI apps, the cars can make a split-second decision with fast calculations. It looks at two cars ahead of you, notices when the car hits a break, calculates the time and decrees the speed needed to avoid accidents. Then, the car slows down. This experience differs greatly from other cars that still rely on humans to make decisions.

Netflix uses Machine Learning to present personalized recommendations. Users browse movies and get recommendations based on what they previously watched and what others watched. This experience is entirely different from previous DVD rental places.

Learn more- Deep Learning vs Machine Learning- Understand the Difference to Improve Product Experience

Google, Amazon, and IFTTT have products for building smart homes. A person heads back home, and the house predicts when the owner will come home based on previous data. The house opens the garage and turns on the lights. Once inside the house, the person can use the voice assistant to instruct the smart TV to play movies. The voice assistant responds according to Natural Language Processing algorithms.

Learn more- Predictive Analytics How Data Insights Improve User Experience

Online banks focus on building customer experience without visits to brick-and-mortar branches. They use AI to detect fraudulent activities, enhance customer service with chatbots, etc.

Big tech companies take on AI and UX

Adobe discusses contextual artificial intelligence to help improve customer experience. For example, a non-contextual AI would give weird recommendations to a user. As Oliver Brdiczka wrote, “An AI system must be adaptable and customizable by the user.” In it, Adobe tried to promote their products in AI: Adobe Sensei.

Learn more- Why You Need Neural Networks to Advance Product Customer Experience

Google created a guidebook, Pair, to help UX professionals and product managers. Some resources it has are tools that include some Github codes. On another page, Google discusses the UX design of AI. “If you aren’t aligned with a human need, you’re just going to build a mighty system to address a very small — or perhaps nonexistent — problem,” the article states.

Learn more- Everything You Need to Know about Artificial Intelligence

UX Design in customer-facing vs. employee-facing apps

While a customer-facing app is dedicated to customers, an employee-facing looks at operations, maintenance, distribution, procurement, and more. For a customer to order a product, they would most likely use one app only. This would signal the employee-facing app. The employee-facing app checks available stocks or the next shipment to the warehouse. When the product is ready, the employee-facing app would inform the packaging and distribution team to prepare for shipping to customers. Next, the app would inform the customer that the product is reaching his or her house.

Learn more- Reasons to Leverage Edge AI Applications to Improve Customer Experience

Tesla’s cars would inform drivers when a crash is likely to happen. On the customer-facing side, it shows an alert. But on the employee-facing side, there’s a lot of data analysis going on. With AI, the car’s algorithm improves over time to calculate the best time to hit the brake to avoid a car accident.

Meanwhile, voice assistants deliver responses to voice commands on the customer-facing side. The employee-facing app would learn miscommunications that occur between users and voice assistants. In fact, the employees are responsible for defining what constitutes a communication problem between the assistant and the user.

Learn more- How to Improve Products Using UX Design-led Algorithms

In short, UX design improves Artificial Intelligence. Contextual AI, as Adobe mentioned, would help companies launch the best AI products. Our previous article talked about Microsoft’s chatbot named Tay that became racist as it conversed with other users on Twitter. A good UX design and contextual AI would have improved the product.

Learn more- Never Stop Improving the Product UX- How to Leverage AI Technologies?

Business stages: Launch, Mature, Growth

When you first start your business, you are in the Launch state. This is where you collect and utilize data to make the best algorithms. Apple is a good example of this with its machine learning algorithms in its products. For example, they implement health apps on their iPhones. At this stage, you want to make sure you’re building good AI algorithms. Apple is focused on leveraging edge AI to improve user experience.

Meanwhile, in the mature stage, you would have enough data to leverage your products and services. You want to engage users to retain them in the longer run. Thus, a good UX design is needed. Here, you look at the existing customer journey and their pain points. You might want to add chatbots or voice assistants, machine learning algorithms, or predictive analytics to ease the customer experience. Additionally, you might want to integrate customer’s experience with one product to another (smart TV with a voice assistant, for example).

Learn more- Everything You Need to Know About IoT and User Experience

Finally, the growth stage is when you want to expand on the ecosystem of your users. Tesla focuses on automotive, where they first built hybrid cars. Then, they expand to self-driving cars and, recently, trucks. Uber expands its ecosystem from transporting people to delivering foods with Uber Eats. Apple expands its services and products from iPod to iPhone to healthcare with Apple Watch.

Start small with building good AI algorithms in your business and use UX design to improve your business as it grows.

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Steps to take during a downturn

Economic downturns occurred in 1930, 2008, and recently during the pandemic challenge in 2020. They impacted business operations and consumer behaviors. Some companies like Google and IBM invested heavily in AI to move forward in their healthcare studies. McKinsey wrote an article on how policies would change industries in 2020.

However, we have to keep in mind that technology is a worthwhile investment. For one reason, technology would always be more affordable, faster, and more advanced as time goes on. In this sense, your company can consider renting cloud infrastructure with Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or IBM Cloud Pak.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence should be planned with a good User Experience Design. In the future, we need AI that perfectly aligns with our behavior and assists our daily lives and needs.

At Designial, we offer user and customer experience services like digital transformation, UX design, UX research, design-led mobile, web app development, and digital marketing. For further information, click here to contact us.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.