Artificial Intelligence or AI is a new buzzword surrounded by reverence and confusion. AI has entered our lives with `Hey Google`, chatbots, and self-driving cars. Businesses harness the powers of AI for process automation, efficiency improvement, and cost reduction at an ever-increasing speed. The questions are how will this innovation impact the jobs market generally, and will AI replace UX designers in particular?
Arounda agency has a profound experience in UX/UI design. We have been creating websites and mobile applications for startups, small and medium businesses for five years. As practitioners, we witness the change AI introduction brings to UX design. In this article, we’d like to dwell on the following questions:
Table of Contents
AI definition
There are several concepts associated with artificial intelligence. Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), computer vision, etc., are among them. But let's sta
rt with the core definition.
AI is a simulation of human cognitive abilities by machines. The idea behind AI was to help people analyze data, make better decisions, and avoid cognitive overload. At first, businesses didn`t believe much in the concept. The AI tech started to draw attention when in 1997, IBM's Deep Blue model defeated the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Since then, it has become an invaluable tool for many entrepreneurs rather than stuff from sci-fi movies.
AI imitates three cognitive skills:
learning
reasoning
self-correction
In simple words, AI systems ingest large amounts of training data and find patterns to make predictions. This way, you can teach an image recognition system in the self-driving car to identify traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, and other vehicles by showing millions of examples to it.
So, what is AI design? Let’s discuss it.
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Is AI UX Design A New Way Of Designing?
Now, what is AI driven UX design?
UX stands for ‘user experience design’ and includes the overall human feeling of the product. Anything you can experience — a website, a mobile phone, or a visit to a hairdresser — is UX.
AI algorithms and UX designers gather and analyze data, search for user-friendly solutions, and create numerous drafts and design modifications. However, the human brain conducts hundreds of operations unconsciously. At the same time, computers need intricate algorithms and learning examples to simulate the thinking process, such as:
Face recognition
Voice recognition
Image recognition
Data analysis
Prediction
Learning
Solving tasks
AI UX design tools don’t do anything brand new. But the speed with which they generate new images is impressive and surpasses human abilities. You can check out the DALLE-2 system that creates realistic images and art from written descriptions.
This tool shows how AI and UX design similarly combine images and ideas to create something new. It’s fascinating and hard to believe that a machine can act like a designer and `Steal Like an Artist.`
The common question is will UX design be replaced by AI? We will return to this thought later in this article.
How Artificial Intelligence Can Help UX Designers
The power of AI lies in the speed of computer operations. AI can instantly analyze massive data arrays and suggest design variations and improvements. A designer can then apply his creativity and experience to choose the best option. From this viewpoint, an AI UX design tool is not a competitor to the human designer but an ingenious instrument.
Multiple variations
AI produces new solutions based on algorithms. They provide a computer with instructions on how to complete the task. For example, an architect Michael Hansmeyer wrote an algorithm that virtually bends the surface of the cube shape and designs unimaginable forms with millions of facets.
This way, Michael gets endless form variations to choose from at a click of a button.
The most pragmatic use of the AI capability to generate multiple combinations is preparation for A/B testing. A/B testing includes creating two variations of an image for testing its performance on two groups from the target audience. The variant with the best feedback will be the one to stay for the final product visual. With AI computer processing, A/B tests can be much faster.
Routines
Designers often face routine tasks that are time-consuming but inevitable: background removal, image sizing, and image restoration. The good news is that AI can overtake this tedious labor without losing quality.
Restoring pictures
We often need to improve the quality of the photo for better marketing effect. Designers must get rid of imperfections and restore missing parts of an image.
AI-enhancing tools such as VanceAI can turn pixelated, blurry images into high-quality, sharp ones. In the same way, they can relieve designers' from fixing poor lighting and contrast, as well as color correction.
Backgrounds
In most cases, the designers' feelings about background removal are strongly negative. This routine task is far away from the creative process. AI UX tools can save hours of scrupulous but thoughtless work and significantly improve designers’ productivity.
For example, the popular Removebg tool analyzes your image, identifies the primary and secondary objects, and then cuts the picture accordingly. As a result, you can make the background transparent, white, or customized in no time.
Personalization
AI personalized labels and banners are already a distinctive marketing trend. Brands experiment with technology, hoping to improve the consumer experience through authenticity, accessibility, and trust, and with fewer expenses on design.
Nutella has proven that AI algorithms successfully create bright and appealing visuals. Nutella's Italian manufacturer Ferrero and Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency produced seven million unique jar labels combined by AI from dozens of patterns and colors. All jars were sold out in a month.
Aside from generating personalized visuals, AI enables automatic text translation into multiple languages for product localization.
Data analysis and prediction
AI can perform repetitive, detail-oriented tasks better than humans. However, when it comes to analyzing large amounts of data, AI tools do the job quicker and with relatively few errors. What is more important, augmented intelligence can make accurate predictions on the basis of mathematical data analysis.
For example, AI can view thousands of user web sessions and predict how people perceive the content on the screen. In turn, the UX designers put the crucial elements like CTA or buttons to the areas where the focus of attention stays more often. You will get the idea from the HotJar platform.
Wireframing
As Uizard's AI Design Assistant notes, all great ideas start with a sketch! The tool develops wireframes from flowcharts and designs mobile apps, websites, and software interfaces automatically.
Once the machine understands the context from picture examples and the flowchart, it can propose numerous structures for an entire application, whether web or mobile. The UX designer then slightly modifies ready wireframe prototypes for the specific product requirements.
Could Artificial Intelligence Take over UX Design Jobs?
Piktochart describes 2022 as the year of creative pragmatism for graphic design and visual communication. Their survey shows 81% of businesses and companies use graphic design mostly for social media graphics, presentations, videos, flyers or brochures, and posters. Entrepreneurs realize that customers understand their products and services better through human-centered design. At the same time, the search for a cheaper way to produce design solutions never stops.
AI UX design tools such as Design.ai can help create videos, banners, mockups, and speeches effortlessly and relatively inexpensively. But although algorithms can generate thousands of stamps instantly, they lack UX designer experience and thinking to adjust the solution to a specific market or audience.
Another point is that weak AI doesn't know how to decide which of the million variations will appeal to the clients most. On the other hand, strong AI, which has a great database, operates thousands of algorithms, is capable of solving complex tasks, and making predictions costs a fortune. It’s simply unfeasible to replace human designers with expensive machines.
We see AI as an augmented helper, a smart instrument for image editing and generation, which still needs a real breathing person behind it to make the work sensible. AI opens mindblowing opportunities to designers and helps to increase their productivity. But there is no threat that it will take away designers' jobs in the foreseeable future.
The reverse side is that UX designers will require additional knowledge and expertise to work with AI UX tools and stay competitive. But that is the general in the digitalized world.
Conclusion
AI brings new possibilities and challenges to the UX designers' workflow. Numerous AI-based tools free designers` hands from repetitive tasks like background removal, rescaling and restoring pictures, and help generate labels, banners, wireframes, logos, and other marketing graphics.
AI is not yet capable of complex decision-making in branding, UX design, and product strategy. You need a human designer’s experience and creative thinking to bring sense to the AI UX tools' results.
Arounda agency has a portfolio of projects covering UI/UX design, UX audit, brand identity, and strong collaboration culture. We have witnessed how our clients, among startups and SMEs, have raised $750+ million. Thus, if you want an experienced designer for your project, we are here for you!
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