10 Ways UX Designers Can Add Value in the AI Era
AI is the best thing that has happened to the UX industry. It is helping us to focus on the really important things — the ones we should have focused on, in the first place.
UX isn’t over. In fact it’s just getting started. The new AI era is a seminal event for the industry, separating the wheat from the chaff. UX is serious business and demands collaborative and multidisciplinary thinkers.
The 10 important things you can and should do as a UX practitioner in the new era of AI.
Here's how you still add value.
1) Facilitate design workshops to discover problems, generate ideas collaboratively and solve the right problems, early on. (Facilitating a workshop is a key skills for a UX practitioner)
2) Talk business through design. Show the value of your design in terms of real business for your stakeholders. Build the capability to talk design at three levels. The Developer level, the Product Managerial level, and the Executive level. (Levels of conversations shows your levels of thinking and implementation of design) Here's a perspective on building business acumen.
3) This is the toughest one. Think first principles in terms of design and building the right user experience for your product, not by analogy, but by reasoning through first principles. To stay ahead of the curve, think about building systems for your ecosystem, that can save costs, avoid redundancy, and avoid just replicating competition. Think TBL(triple bottom line) and build an ability to answer ethical questions from a design standpoint.
4) Take an evidence-based design approach and get easy buy-in from stakeholders, generate respect for the design practice, and focus on design outcomes in presentations
5) Focus on ecosystems and how touchpoints can come together to create an unifying experience. Think about the big picture, as well as the tiny pixel that can could have a domino effect in your entire user experience journey. (Moving a button, can shift the entire business model, and only seasoned professionals understand the implications of even tiny changes). Build a multidimensional thinking perspective in problem solving and delivering design solutions.
6) Talk to real users, conduct observation studies, and co-create with your users, if need be. Understand what drives your users and what are their motivations. Deep dive into psychological profiling of your user groups and get to the bottom of what they need, want, and aspire for.
7) Collaborate with your internal teams and build the design culture for your organization. (Remember, UX is an organizational-wide responsibility, best represented by the designers) Discover gaps and opportunities with cross-functional teams and fix recurring design issues once-for-all. Here are 10 ways you can improve your UX, right away.
8) Advocate design across your organization, and also build an external community around your design efforts. (Pays off in your hiring efforts and also helps in building your brand with design insights) Design advocacy is the second job of the designer. Well, unless you don't want to do it, it's a different story.
9) Occasionally, be the user. (I know, you’re not the user) Get a first-hand experience of your total ecosystem. Here's my perspective on why designers should hit the road.
10) Understand your product in an out, know your users well, know your brand and business well, keep track of competition and benchmark your UX outcomes with them as well, as your own high standards inline with First principles (point 3)
Finally, remember that UX practitioners are in the business of design for the design of business.
1) Facilitate design workshops to discover problems, generate ideas collaboratively and solve the right problems, early on. (Facilitating a workshop is a key skills for a UX practitioner)
2) Talk business through design. Show the value of your design in terms of real business for your stakeholders. Build the capability to talk design at three levels. The Developer level, the Product Managerial level, and the Executive level. (Levels of conversations shows your levels of thinking and implementation of design) Here's a perspective on building business acumen.
3) This is the toughest one. Think first principles in terms of design and building the right user experience for your product, not by analogy, but by reasoning through first principles. To stay ahead of the curve, think about building systems for your ecosystem, that can save costs, avoid redundancy, and avoid just replicating competition. Think TBL(triple bottom line) and build an ability to answer ethical questions from a design standpoint.
4) Take an evidence-based design approach and get easy buy-in from stakeholders, generate respect for the design practice, and focus on design outcomes in presentations
5) Focus on ecosystems and how touchpoints can come together to create an unifying experience. Think about the big picture, as well as the tiny pixel that can could have a domino effect in your entire user experience journey. (Moving a button, can shift the entire business model, and only seasoned professionals understand the implications of even tiny changes). Build a multidimensional thinking perspective in problem solving and delivering design solutions.
6) Talk to real users, conduct observation studies, and co-create with your users, if need be. Understand what drives your users and what are their motivations. Deep dive into psychological profiling of your user groups and get to the bottom of what they need, want, and aspire for.
7) Collaborate with your internal teams and build the design culture for your organization. (Remember, UX is an organizational-wide responsibility, best represented by the designers) Discover gaps and opportunities with cross-functional teams and fix recurring design issues once-for-all. Here are 10 ways you can improve your UX, right away.
8) Advocate design across your organization, and also build an external community around your design efforts. (Pays off in your hiring efforts and also helps in building your brand with design insights) Design advocacy is the second job of the designer. Well, unless you don't want to do it, it's a different story.
9) Occasionally, be the user. (I know, you’re not the user) Get a first-hand experience of your total ecosystem. Here's my perspective on why designers should hit the road.
10) Understand your product in an out, know your users well, know your brand and business well, keep track of competition and benchmark your UX outcomes with them as well, as your own high standards inline with First principles (point 3)
Finally, remember that UX practitioners are in the business of design for the design of business.
I would like to add the AI perspective.
Well, all said and done, we need to start accepting, respecting, understanding, and leveraging the capabilities of AI as well in the way we design and conduct our business. One should demarcate what AI can deliver and what the individual can and should deliver. UX practitioners needs to build a smart working and collaborative partnership of sorts with AI.
AI is quite smart. I say it’s smart, because it has learnt and is learning from smart people like you and me, and all those people who have lived before us and contributed in building our world. We should remember that there’s plenty of intellectual work in the public domain and AI is training by drawing insights from our rich history. AI too has a self-learning curve, so let’s give it some time and room to grow. In the meantime, let’s be resourceful in mutual interest.
The new career mantra is to double down on your strengths, and leverage AI wherever you need help on improvement areas. A good blend of AI and NI can create new creative possibilities for you and for the emerging new world.
UX will always be People.
