The agentic era of UX
The future of digital experience is here — but it’s being minced into microscopic use cases.
#Alex Klein
TLDR: The thing missing from AI user experience is, well, the experience.
It’s been 17 months since the tech gods bestowed generative artificial intelligence on us. Here’s a state of the union for AI UX:
A bunch of companies shipped either an AI summary feature, or a RAG-based search feature
They all declared their products to be AI-powered
We all clapped and clapped — until we couldn’t clap anymore
If we’re being honest with ourselves, the transformative new era hasn’t been so transformative yet. We were given the ‘most profound technology since the fire,’ and companies have used it to make fake candles.
I’ve appreciated the work of many designers who have pushed to remind us of our golden rule: technology must solve real user needs. Or, more directly, AI shouldn’t be built just for the sake of AI.
The next stage of this argument is to tackle a thornier problem: AI is seen as a loose-leaf solution rather than a new paradigm of user experience. We know that the value of UX comes from understanding a user’s entire journey and holistically supporting them along the way; yet, the AI is being tacked onto today’s experiences to solve micro user needs instead of transforming from end-to-end.
Companies are picking individual use cases, and serving them up to users like little peas, rather than weaving the ingredients into a substantial meal.
This reductive approach is exacerbated by hungry consultants, who are all selling a similar offering:
Find 10–20 use cases for GenAI
Prioritize the field by analyzing complexity and value
Implement a chatbot that tackles one or two applications
There are, of course, exceptions. For instance, Loom’s AI launch was a great example of going beyond an individual feature to consider the user’s entire journey. It would have been very reasonable for Loom, a video recording solution, to ship an AI transcription feature and call it a day. Instead, they supported the user’s entire workflow and created the functionality to record a video, transcribe it automatically, edit it, and file a Jira ticket. That end-to-end perspective is what’s missing in AI UX today.
If we’re being real, to fully deliver this end-to-end vision, we need a bit more of the foundational technology — but we’re quickly getting there.
Link: https://lnkd.in/eRE3B9pF
Co-founder Userology || ex-PM at Revolut
5moInteresting read. I am the founder of Userology AI, and we have developed a voice AI for moderating usability testing sessions. The AI which is trained of thousands of hours of usability test sessions. It listens, observes, and converses with participants. Would you be willing to have a chat? I am curious on your take on how the future looks like with the AI researcher we have created. Thank you!