Written By Seetha Talluru
Welcome to another exciting event recap in the IterateUX event blogging series! We had the fantastic opportunity to learn about Jakob Nielsen’s thoughts and recommendations concerning UX Design and the growing AI environment. He discussed how AI affects the UX Design workforce, boosts productivity, and changes UX Design methods. Let’s introduce Jakob and learn about his key insights on UX Design in the AI world.
Jakob Nielsen is a well-known usability pioneer with 41 years of experience in UX. He started the Nielsen Norman Group with Dr. Norman and is known for making complex enterprise software and defining web usability. Jakob was also the usability lead for the Sun Microsystems website.
Insight 1: What new skills are required to be competitive in the AI landscape today?
Jakob discussed whether AI is just a big hype or something real. With many years of experience working in tech companies, Jakob explained that new technologies are often hyped up but are less important. However, he believes AI is different and becoming more than a technology trend. Jakob mentioned several benefits of AI, showing how it dramatically boosts productivity.
· AI brings significant changes to productivity-boosting it up to 40%, which is huge
· AI helps people work faster and produce fast results.
For example, Jakob mentioned his past studies on whether better design can help people use software more effectively. The study showed that better design improved productivity by only 5% to 8%. In contrast, AI increased productivity by 40%. Because of this, he emphasized the importance of learning and using AI for work.
Insight 2: Why do you think Perplexity AI is adding to UX, and is there any other tool that can help in the research phase?
He pointed out that AI cannot replace humans in user research. It’s not ideal to have AI pretend to be a user because it cannot reflect the unpredictability of human behavior. AI cannot produce unique behaviors and actions we look for during user interviews and usability tests. These types of insights can be crucial for designing a product. According to Jakob, if there are no surprises in these interviews and tests, they are not done correctly. Also, not all interviewers have the skills to conduct compelling user interviews.
Jakob explained how AI can help in other ways to support UX Research:
· AI can translate interviews into 50 different languages, which is beyond the capabilities of a human being
· AI can help analyze and synthesize the results from the user interviews and usability tests
Jakob also brought up an important point that AI can generate many ideas in ideation faster than humans.
Insight 3: How do you envision the future of different UX roles like leaders, managers, juniors, and seniors?
Jakob noticed many changes in the job market and discussed the potential for unemployment. He explained that executives may lay off half the staff if one person could do twice as much work. However, a solid team will still be necessary. For instance, one person cannot do many tasks at once as the quality of work will decrease over time, causing burnout rates to increase. Therefore, more people still need to be hired to get the work done. Currently, there’s a lot of mediocre design that needs improvement. Jakob predicts that there will be more UX jobs if people can do twice as much work.
There might be fewer centralized UX Design roles like designer, manager, director, and VP in the future. Instead, UX Design jobs might have a broader scope. Jakob explained that AI can improve the performance of weaker workers, making them as good as seniors or better performers, which helps beginners with less experience. However, this could be a disadvantage in the job market because there might be fewer apprenticeship jobs for new UX Designers to learn. This is great for people with ten years of experience but not for those just starting in UX Design.
Wrap-Up
Overall, Jakob provided wonderful insights and a thorough overview during his interview. He explained the competition in the current AI landscape and expressed the importance of AI in the UX Design environment and the job market. The key takeaway from his interview is that AI is not a replacement for UX design but a supporter.
I hope you enjoyed this event recap. Please subscribe to IterateUX Medium! For more information, watch the interview with Jakob Nielsen on Crucial Competitiveness in the New AI Landscape.
IterateUX Medium: https://medium.com/@iterateux/iterateux-design-challenges-2023-f946caeca78b
For more information on this event, please watch the event recording on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQ5Z9HW-V4&t=748s
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