Taking the ‘A’ out of ‘AI’ for better UX
Steve Jackson
Director of Product Management at Applaud specializing in AI for HR Tech SAAS and user-centric design. NNG Certified UX professional.
When I’m working on something particularly complex, there are two things that make my brain work noticeably more efficiently – music and chocolate.
I’ve seen countless articles about the “the world’s first [insert industry here] chatbot” but almost always I find myself thinking – so what? Perhaps my design and development background has given me some sort of superpowers to see these world firsts as nothing more than nonsense most of the time. Everybody seems desperate to build and promote something powered by artificial intelligence.
It was the same way a few years back when everybody wanted something on mobile. The world was awash with disjointed, useless mobile apps that had absolutely no use to end users and were not vaguely close to addressing business problems or delivering solutions. Now that mobile is in a better place (not perfect, better), people are moving on to wanting “something” artificial Intelligence based. The circle of silliness begins again, but only this time, the potential for disaster is far greater.
Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
I can eat twice my own bodyweight in chocolate – doesn’t mean I should! The same applies for artificial intelligence. I can get people to re-learn everything they know about interacting with my app – doesn’t mean I should! I can tell you right now, I won’t. I love the potential for AI to do great things that will genuinely enrich people’s lives – but to reach that potential we need to think first and develop second.
Sounds good on paper – but is the wording all wrong?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – now there is a sparkly new buzz phrase with a lovely short acronym. I think two letter acronyms are overrated though – I get bored after the first letter. So maybe we should take away the A – and focus on the I. In this case, the A is the bit that is causing all the trouble. People only care about the intelligence part anyway.