From Buying Software To Hiring AI Assistants

Every 10 years we see a paradigm shift in software. The last decade gave rise to beautiful web/mobile user interfaces and design principles that made software pleasant to use. Consumer products lead the way and enterprise-grade software adopted gradually. Then we had a wave of “big-data” followed by the practical application of machine learning.

Now there is a bigger shift taking place with the evolution of UX to AI centric modes of work. Bots by nature are conversational. We’ve already seen how messaging apps have eaten up the entire world, creating some of the largest companies in existence. If speech and text are becoming the preferred ways of interacting with a system, we should start focusing on the Interaction Experience of a bot.

Interaction experience is ultimately the way we get artificial intelligence to understand, adapt, and engage with us.

Just like how good UX is assessed by minimalistic design, a good bot should be judged by how seamlessly it can turn commands into tangible actions.

With increased computing and the democratization of machine learning, we get to tackle the holy grail of quantifying conversations. While experts acknowledge that we are early in this era (there are very few bots today that solve tangible business use cases or bring some level of intelligence to the table), there is an opportunity for bots to add value that typical graphical interfaces cannot provide.

User Interfaces will still remain a backbone for the work we do, but I sense a shift in where we spend our time interacting with software systems. We will come to rely on the system chatting with us, providing us with valuable information like a colleague or human being would.

The great bots of tomorrow will deliver frictionless interactions, smarter context, and personalization.

This makes me curious of a future where purchasing decisions around buying software systems look more like hiring decisions. I think this will be a progressive evolution. Good assistants will begin in highly specialized vertical areas of a business. Think about AI helping Sales Reps, Project Managers, or Data Scientists perform functional roles better.

Could we see a world where we start “hiring” AI assistants based on what we as employers look for in good job applicants and colleagues.

I wanted to see if there was any truth to this notion. I began by reaching out to our own customers who use Fireflies.ai as a virtual project manager. It was pleasantly surprising to find that the way they treated our Slack Bot was fundamentally different from the way they treated a conventional software system.

Ironically, we didn’t have any conscious design decisions in making Fireflies.ai feel human. However, other users felt that Fireflies was like an important member of their team.

Here were some sample responses I heard:

“As a PM, 60% of my job is following up with folks about project deadlines. Sometimes I get tired or I forget. It takes a lot of persistence. Now that I can have Fireflies automatically follow up with my dev team at regular intervals, we joke with all our PMs about being as diligent as Fireflies.” — David

“As I’m talking to my teammate about scheduling a meeting, Fireflies lets us know about available times. This is so thoughtful when you have a system that goes an extra step in helping you.” — Nadia

“There are a lot of things in my head that I need to get down on paper. Before I would make little sticky notes that would get lost. Now I DM Fireflies and dump everything into the chat. It’s like having a patient friend I can speak out loudly to. The conversational element makes Fireflies feel like a colleague.” — Haley

At first, all this touchy/feely stuff didn’t make sense to me. Bots at the end of the day were non-sentient. I was quite honestly surprised that users were forming some level of emotional connection with our system. In the coming weeks, I want to explore the tangible benefits this could have. Based on the results, it might make sense to start designing our bot to feel more like a human experience.

Creating human-like experiences for bots could be the new UI. This would be analogous to how style and color themes influence the way users like a software product.

UI has had a huge impact on feel and likability in the past. If we can quantify how a personable bot can help teams work better with Fireflies, I think this will change the way we look at bot design, making it an important decision maker for customers.

@krish_ramineni

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