UX Roundup: IDEO Cut in Half | Dall-E Characters | AI New UI Paradigm World Usability Day | OpenAI Keynote
Summary: Design firm IDEO cut half its staff since 2020, with most layoffs in 2023 | Happy World Usability Day Nov. 9 | OpenAI Keynote livestreamed over the Internet today | Prompting Dall-E to retain characters through seed reuse | AI is first new UI paradigm in 60 years
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UX Roundup for November 6. Bird by Leonardo.
Design Firm IDEO Has Laid Off Half its Staff Since 2020
Well-reported article in Fast Company and interesting LinkedIn discussion on a post by article writer Mark Wilson about the severe downsizing of design firm IDEO:
You might think that I’m gloating over the bad fortunes of a competitor, but that’s not my errand here. I have always respected IDEO as one of the world’s better design firms, even back when I ran a UX consultancy and lost some client deals to them. (I also won some, don’t worry.) Now that I’m an independent influencer, I couldn’t care less about the fortunes of individual UX companies since I focus on helping the world’s users.
Empty design office by Leonardo.
To me, IDEO was always too focused on glamour and on hyping fancy design. In contrast, my approach was to make UX cheap and practical with the goal of increasing company profits through conversion optimization. (My bigger goals were always to improve the standard of living for the world population and to make technology less frustrating for normal people, but the only realistic way of achieving these two goals is to help one company at a time ship better products and websites.)
But as I said, despite having different values, I respect IDEO. The town of UX is big enough to accommodate both glamour design and usability design.
Empty design office by Dall-E. Which version do you prefer? Leonardo’s is prettier, whereas Dall-E’s is less realistic but tells the story about why the office is empty. The contrast between the two illustrations makes my point about the contrasting design visions. I like them both, but if I could run only one, I would pick this one by Dall-E.
Going back to basics, cutting half the staff is not a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with IDEO, as was the message of that Fast Company article I linked. The company is 32 years old, and nothing lasts forever — certainly not big staff numbers. In particular, many firms overexpanded during the boom times, and setbacks are the norm right now. Setbacks are not a sign of failure, just a sign of adjusting to more realistic circumstances.
As for how IDEO’s bad news relates to UX in general, I agree with Mike Sukow’s analysis that we’re seeing a more efficient, leaner design processes that will benefit the industry in the long term. This is particularly true as more and more firms build better and bigger internal UX teams and thus need less expensive external consulting. Companies that used to be UX clients have transformed themselves into UX doers. This is good news: We have won!
For my general take on this year’s flood of bad news about UX, I refer you to my article, The UX Angst of 2023, as summarized in this infographic. In particular, AI increases business professionals’ productivity by anywhere from 33% to 66%, so any UX company that goes AI-first will have a strong future, with much demand to help clients increase profitability through AI deployments in enterprise software. (On Oct. 3, IDEO’s homepage didn’t sport a single occurrence of the word “AI” despite 23 feature stories about less-relevant topics. Ignoring the biggest thing to happen to UX in 60 years is not a way to attract customers.)
Feel free to copy or reuse this infographic, provided you give this URL as the source.
Happy World Usability Day: Thursday, November 9, 2023
The annual celebration of usability, World Usability Day, is this Thursday. Check the World Usability Day website for possible events near you: each year typically features around 50 events in about 25 countries. (My email newsletter has subscribers in 118 countries, so there is still some way to go before we have enough celebration events.)
My suggestion for you: on Nov. 9, post to your social media one design that has made you happy (or at least pleased) because of good usability. Let’s be positive on this day of celebration. (On other days, feel free to post about products with terrible usability, of which there are too many to count.)
My own example is the reordering process on nuts.com: it takes me less than a minute from typing in the (blissfully short) URL into the browser until I’m done, as long as I am placing a repeat order on this website. I eat a lot of macadamia nuts ??
领英推荐
?User experience has gone global in a big way this decade. Happy World Usability Day 2023! (Globe by Leonardo.)
OpenAI Keynote Livestreamed Today, November 6
OpenAI’s developer conference opens today, November 6, with a keynote address at 10:00 AM US Pacific Time (6 PM London time, 7 PM Berlin time; here’s a link to convert to your time zone).
You can watch the live stream on YouTube. I hope they are smart enough to keep a recording of the talk at this same URL after the event, in case you missed the live stream.
I have no idea whether this will be an exciting or a boring talk, but I plan to watch for two reasons:
Prompting Dall-E to Retain Characters through Seed Reuse
Image-generation tools like Leonardo and Midjourney have long offered the ability to generate more images that retain most stylistic elements by reusing the same “seed” in subsequent prompts. We can now make Dall-E do the same using a prompting hack in ChatGPT. Simon Willison provides an in-depth explanation of the feature, with many illustrations, but here’s the short version.
Evolve images in a persistent style by reusing the random seed in generative AI. (Dall-E.)
The seed introduces a random but consistent variation into the image generation process. This “noise” is essentially a pattern that the AI uses to generate the image. The seed value is unimportant in itself, as its job is to make the results random. However, it does mean that the AI will use a different number at each prompt, producing different results unless the same seed value is reused. (I got this explanation from Perplexity.AI, which I’m using instead of search engines these days. What you just read is its output after light human editing. Always supplement any AI output with human review and editing.)
Use a prompt like this to get the seed used for an image you like: “What’s the seed for the left image.”
Here is an example of how this works. I was trying to generate a character who looks somewhat like myself. I got one I liked, except for having too much hair and sporting a beard. So I asked ChatGPT for the seed used in the nice picture and issued a new prompt, asking for the character to be semi-bald and clean-shaven. Sadly, Dall-E refuses to draw older men without a gray beard. It takes the cliché of graybeards too literally. It also has a strong preference for people with a full head of hair. So, its stereotypes prevented me from getting a character who looks like me. But it’s certainly a good example of character persistence.
Reusing the seed preserves the character, both in looks and dress, except for minor variations (open collar vs. necktie). So, if you generate a character you like, you can get more images featuring him or her.
AI Is the First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years
AI is introducing the third user-interface paradigm in computing history, shifting from command-based interaction to intent-based outcome specification, where users tell the computer what they want, not how to do it, reversing the locus of control.
The full article has much more detail, but here’s an infographic summarizing the 3 UI paradigms:
Feel free to copy or reuse this infographic, provided you give this URL as the source.
UX/UI Designer, Researcher
11 个月Thanks for posting, I’m still early in my days of UX so reading all these perspectives from people such as yourself is such a wealth of learning for me! I’m a bit of a UX team of one for an in-house dev team, so it’s nice to know things are moving that way and for the better perhaps. I certainly think it’s easier to empathise with users when you’re around many of them in the same company, but then familiarity might cause some things to be overlooked in user research stages, and also perhaps raise the risk of biases in things like responses to interviews as they know you are internal or have a working relationship with you already ?? I’ll certainly be thinking about how to mitigate that…
Art Director @ Chaos Theory Studios | Brand Strategy, Visual Design, and UX
11 个月Thank you,?Jakob Nielsen, for the thought-provoking article. Adopting and using AI in all possible ways continues to be an essential aspect of creative leadership. For the past two decades, UX has undergone significant changes. This new era is an excellent opportunity to re-educate and level up the UX game, using AI to secure clients and create the next generation of digital experiences. Creatives must adapt, evolve, and retool their thinking to prove the worth of their skill set. I see this moment as an opportunity similar to the launch of the iPhone when the next significant idea is presented, and we cannot imagine how we ever lived without it. The real question is, will we watch from the sidelines or be active participants? The importance of AI in the creative industry and its ability to bring forth both practical and magical solutions is now being realized at a near-exponential growth rate. However, I also recognize humans' significant role in the artistic and pragmatic world of UX and design. So, I will always respect the needs of my human counterparts, using #aiforgood, not evil.
Product Designer & UX Researcher | Strategic Design Thinker | Product Manager | Creating Innovative Digital Experiences
12 个月I’m really sorry to say that, Mr. Jakob Nielsen, but NN courses and certifications have always been inaccessible to most of Brazilians designers – $1 is usually R$5 in our currency and even more in other Latin American countries. On the other hand, your approach to make UX cheap works perfectly if we consider NN vast content. They are there, available to everyone who wants to read and pretty easy to translate for non English speakers – even though the language is still a barrier to most of them. So, here is a pain point to be solved as a great influencer you are: How could you guys make your certifications and courses more accessible?
Freelance Product Designer | UX Consultant | SAAS UX Specialist | UX Mentor
12 个月Perhaps IDEO have become a bit of a victim of their own success: everyone was taught the basics of design thinking, and now they are no longer needed. I remember a time when every UX designer who put even a little effort into learning and development had at least one of its kits or worksheets on their hard drive.