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The impact of developments in Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being seen in a wide variety of industries. But how could it affect the methods and techniques used in User Experience and User Research?

A lot of concern has been voiced about the use of AI in many industries, with some quite legitimate fears and risks being highlighted. However, whilst we need to be aware of those risks and limitations, we need to be open to exploring how AI can enhance our methodologies and deliver even better results for clients and users.

In this article, we discuss some of the possible ways in which AI could complement and enhance our UX working processes.

AI-powered UX Design

AI could improve the efficiency of UX design by automating tasks that are currently time-consuming for designers.

For example, AI could be used to analyse user data to identify patterns or trends that might not be immediately apparent to a human researcher or designer, allowing them to make more informed design decisions.

Additionally, AI could even generate design initial ideas or early prototypes, saving designers time and effort during the design process. Rather than replacing human designers, AI design tools are more likely to augment and support designers, streamlining and enhancing their workflow.

AI could give suggestions and ideas to designers, enable them to see a new perspective if asked about a problem. In addition to making an informed design decision, AI can help bring a fresh perspective in the design process that we might have missed in our process.

AI-powered UI Tools

There are various AI-powered tools available for both UX and UI design that claim to save time, ease the creation process, and increase productivity. Time will tell as to how useful they truly are, but worthwhile investigating. Some examples include:

Generative AI Imagery: Midjourney/Photoshop Beta/DALL·E and many others create original imagery based on simple text input. In testing, the outputs can be initially impressive – although don’t seem to have yet escaped the ‘uncanny valley’ look meaning that careful and considered use is required. One strong possible use we did uncover was in rapidly creating themed imagery for exploration and inspiration in Art Direction workshops – which you can read more about here.

Wireframe/UI Generation: There are a number of design tools that promise rapid creation of high-quality wireframes or UI Designs from sketches or even simple text descriptions. However, evidence from our own investigation suggests quality is often questionable or so generic as to be of little use in complex situations. We’ll be watching with interest – but we’re not there just yet for this to be a truly useful tool.

Attention Insight: A tool that uses AI to predict where users will focus their attention on a webpage or app, helping designers optimise their designs for maximum engagement.

Colormind: A tool that uses AI to generate colour palettes based on input images or predefined styles, helping designers create visually appealing and cohesive designs.

AI-powered User Research?

User Research is an area in which many possible AI opportunities are being raised. Possible AI implementations include:

Automating tasks: AI could automate tasks such as data collection and analysis, freeing up researchers to focus on more strategic work. For example, AI can be used to transcribe audio and video recordings of user interviews or to code qualitative data.

Identifying patterns and trends: AI can be used to identify patterns and trends in data that would be difficult or impossible for humans to spot. For example, AI can be used to analyse user behaviour data to identify areas where users are struggling, or to identify potential improvements to the user experience.

Creating more engaging and interactive user research experiences: AI could be used to create more engaging and interactive user research experiences. For example, AI can be used to create chatbots that can interact with users in real-time or to create virtual reality environments that can be used to simulate user experiences.

Digital Humans: Now this is a really contentious area! The purported creation and use of “digital humans” or “digital users” in user research has caused much furore in the research community. The concept of an AI-powered digital user – created to researcher-defined specifications and used to rapidly conduct multiple studies, is both enticing from a cost and time perspective but also possibly deeply flawed and even ethically unsound. Time will tell where technology leads us, but this will certainly be a controversial area.

Overall, AI has the potential to revolutionise user experience and research by making it more efficient, effective, and personalised. As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative ways to use AI in UX.

As with any new technology, we need to be aware of the risks, the limitations and the possible ethical issues at play (which we’ll discuss in a future article) but we also need to be open to the ways in which AI can enhance our practice to deliver higher quality experiences for clients and users.

As a response to this need our UX experts developed our AI Experience Discovery framework: A lens by which we can help you explore how A.I. can and will affect your product experiences.

By baking this into everything we do, we ensure client products are ready for rapidly changing customer expectations and deliver the next generation of best-in-class digital experiences.