From hypothetical future problem to a modern-day phenomenon, AI, or Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in recent years. While AI is slowly but surely seeping into many aspects of daily life, its rollout has been quicker in some industries than others.
The fast pace of innovation and non-stop rollout of new tech has left some designers facing growing issues in UI and UX. Rather than exacerbating the problem, AI may, in fact, present a solution to many of these issues while also working to improve the user experience. Read on as we take a deep dive into AI and some of the possibilities it brings for the future of UX and UI design.
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How AI can solve complex UI and UX issues
The power of AI allows businesses to highly personalize the user experience rather than trying to design a flow that appeals to everyone. By taking care of repetitive, time-consuming tasks like number crunching and analyzing data sets to spot trends, AI helps create more time for UX designers to optimize the UX for everyone. Here are two of the major ways the rise of AI will solve modern-day UX issues.
Data Collection
One of the real benefits of AI is its ability to collect and analyze large data sets quickly and accurately, then collate that information into a format that’s easily understood by designers and other team members. Rather than manually collecting data on individual customers and users, AI automates this process, freeing up designers to focus on other tasks. Some of the data that AI can collect and analyze includes the device used, session time and duration, user flow and more. With this information, designers can easily spot patterns based on common user behavior and design features and flows that are going to be beneficial for users. The time saving and increased accuracy makes this seriously exciting technology in the UX space.
Prediction
Another area of AI with huge potential for UX and UI designers is the ability to predict trends and future behavior based on things like a person’s browsing habits, search terms or use of an app. With countless businesses (think Netflix) already leveraging AI for its predictive accuracy, the sky really is the limit for AI’s uses in design.
Personalization
Depending on the sophistication of the technology framework, designers could, in theory, implement an AI algorithm that works to personalize a website, app or software based on the historical usage of the individual. Essentially, this level of AI would provide a UX perfectly suited to each individual, delivering AI-powered content based on their previous behavior.
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How AI can help in better A/B Testing of new design
First used by Google in the year 2000 to help perfect their search results, A/B tests have been a key weapon in the marketing arsenal ever since. While A/B testing is fairly effective at finding the option that will work best for a particular audience, it tends to take a lengthy amount of time and often budget to find a result. What if there was a better way?
Through the power of AI, rather than choosing one solution that satisfies the majority of users, designers are able to deliver an agile solution that delivers the optimal UX to each individual user.
Software that is powered by AI is able to use machine learning to serve multiple alternatives to an individual and use the results to tailor the experience as the user moves forward. Rather than just testing options A and B and dumping the winner on the majority of your database, AI-powered machine learning enables a business to test not just A and B, but also C, D, E, F, etc. on every single user to find the creative they prefer.
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The way information architecture of UI & UX can be transformed using AI
For better or worse, the rise of AI is bringing big changes for IA (information architecture) as we know it. While in the past, web and UX developers needed only to make sure the information was stored in a layout that made sense to people physically searching for it, artificial intelligence in web application development has made things a little different.
Two of the most widespread AI applications today are solely voice search (think Google Home or the Amazon Alexa) and voice search with a linked device (Apple’s Siri). While these innovations are undoubtedly positive for users, they present a challenge for IA. Factors like foreign accents and even words with multiple meanings are obstacles to be navigated and are things that will need to be considered when planning information architecture moving forward as the use of this type of AI becomes more and more common.
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Multiple ways how AI can contribute to brand management and build brand awareness
A recent study by SalesForce found that 53% of marketers planned to implement AI in branding into their marketing strategy in the near future. As more and more interaction between brands and their customers is done via computer, AI will play an increasing role in not only nurturing these relationships but in overall brand awareness online. Here are some major ways AI can (and is already) contributing to brand awareness.
Targeting the Right Audience
Regardless of how impressive the goods or services your business produces are, you’ll be facing an uphill battle if you’re not targeting them towards the right audience. While historically marketers and sales teams have used online analytics tools to gain insights into a businesses’ customers, the quality of the data this generates as well as the time it takes to do so makes it a flawed process. With the help of AI, businesses will have massively increased visibility over who is interacting with their business, allowing them to tailor their marketing activities to best suit this audience.
Optimizing Budget
So much of the success of businesses online advertising comes down to effectively managing the budget. While many digital advertising tools include in-built analytics programs, it is hard to be sure of the reliability of this data. By crunching data and spotting patterns in a timely manner, AI is poised to help businesses scale up their online advertising.
Online Customer Service
These days, so much of a brand’s reputation online is influenced by customer service. And what’s one of the best ways to ensure your business is providing next-level service? AI. While AI technology in this area has been around for a little while, it’s only been in the last couple of years that the quality has reached a level that is making the technology widespread.
Depending on the industry, the majority of online customer inquiries for business are likely to come through either a website or social media platforms like Facebook. While in the past, businesses needed to either dedicate team members to manning these channels or face the wrath of their customers, AI presents a better solution; chatbots.
Depending on the level of sophistication a business opts for, these chatbots can be programmed with essential information to answer basic questions or use machine learning to really take customer service to the next level. As the technology evolves, this is one area of AI that has the potential to really benefit businesses.
Moving Forward
While undoubtedly complex, AI has the potential to change the future of UX design. By automating less exciting parts of the process and providing rock-solid information on customers, for example, AI has the potential to give businesses a serious edge over competitors not only when it comes to user experience, but all aspects of the business.
As is becoming increasingly clear, AI is not a fad but a viable solution for many of the problems that come with this digital age. Businesses that fail to harness the power of this technology will find themselves falling behind and no longer able to compete.
