Summary: Generative AI (Gen. AI), like ChatGPT, introduces novel interaction patterns in human-computer interaction (HCI). These patterns are characterized by improvisation, co-creation, and enabling productivity by scaffolding a user’s task. Bring these UX patterns to your AI, UX, or Service Design project.
Remarkable AI UX Patterns worth noticing
In Remarkable AI UX patterns- part 1, we covered fun and user enjoyment as a dominant theme emerging from Gen AI interactions.
In this part 2 video on Remarkable AI UX patterns, Frank Spillers covers more aspects of Generative AI interactions that can change how you think about designing interactions. HINT: It’s all about remaining fluid and sparking tasks versus making users create from scratch.
The following patterns are worth reflecting upon in terms of how you approach UX or Service Design challenges:
- Improvisation as interaction pattern: Whatever you throw at generative AI, it has an answer for you. Well, usually. An example from the Grandfather of Human Centered Design, Don Norman, who helped redesign consumer tax software, TurboTax. His primary strategy was to avoid linear flows and instead let users skip around; the way you’re never wrong when driving with Google or Apple Maps; they adjust to your “mistakes.”
- Co-creation as “new default”: Co-creation with AI is addictive. Once you experience the dance between your aims and a generative AI: you want more. Gen AI acts as the spark to your fire. In the past, users were expected to bring or invent their fire starters. This pattern of “start for me” and “let’s continue building together” represents a major technological enablement of human-computer collaboration (yea, let’s call it “HCC” or HC2). As a result, Gen AI is now enabling an augmentation of cognition, which has always been the goal of computers back to the Steve Jobs/ Steve Wozniak vision in the mid-70s.
Watch Steve Jobs anticipating Gen AI in 1985….
- Scaffolding a user’s tasks: Gen AI enables productivity by scaffolding a user’s task. It does this by amplifying relevancy. Of course, you need to guide its output, but this new HCI pattern is worth reflecting on regarding how you support user goals and tasks. By helping users progress more quickly through a task, you introduce a faster feeling of movement toward success.
Transcript:
“Now, when I first started working with AI in 1997, when I was studying UX and cognitive science, I attended a talk by the great Dr. Fred Brooks, the guy who wrote the book Mythical Man Month. He coined the term database architecture, and he also was a pioneer in Virtual Reality. Dr. Fred Brooks used to say that AI, because AI at the time was not as valuable, at least it didn’t seem like it. And it was kind of just back in systems, it wasn’t that accurate or useful, to be honest. VR was seen as the new potential to amplify your senses with high fidelity, real-time information to your eyes and so to your hands, to your ears, and so forth. And so he used to say intelligence amplification beats AI: “IA beats AI!”. And we’ve realized now I think with ChatGPT and and generative AI, that it’s not really a contest anymore between AI and VR.
I think we will get to a point where AI and VR are embedded and work together, and I think AI will actually make Augmented Reality relevant. I think that’s my professional opinion from being around the field, being 25 and counting… So what is it that we can learn about generative AI? One of the things is that it’s a narrative co-creator“.
Noticing Improv as a UX Pattern
“So it lets you build on the work that it gives you and uses a lot of improvisation techniques. Like you can’t, actually; the paradox is you can’t do improv with ChatGPT; it’s terrible. at that. It tries to summarize and give you scripts and things, and it’s like it can’t handle a real-time exchange at the moment. However, the way it acts is like improv.
See the VIDEO: Use Improv to improve AI Interactions
I received a question from a client, and I really did not have an answer to this question. And I put the question into ChatGPT, and ChatGPT gave me an answer which was… pacing the client’s question. It was doing what we do in improv, which is yes and, and it generated a response and I sent that response back, cleaned it up a little bit, sent it to the client. And the client was like, “Yes, that’s amazing.” And I was like, “Oh, wow.” And now I was having this augmented conversation because the AI was augmenting the conversation and then I had to respond to another question that was asked and kind of try and bring these two to these two things together, which I think I was able to do. The point being that that narrative co-creation is symbolic of AI, this paradigm shift. It’s augmentation that’s not going to take your job away necessarily. The fears about that, the fear about AI is really that it can be manipulated– it can cause harm.
What Gen AI can and can’t do
“So it’s a safety issue and we don’t really have evidence that it’s going to take away jobs even though journalists are obsessed with that topic, right? So instead of being threatened by a job because ChatGPT cannot take over for you today, it can’t design wireframes, it can’t do user research, it can’t do accurate things, it can’t do accurate things, it can’t do accurate things. a researcher and you’re looking for references, they can’t do that, but what it can do is it can amplify your imagination it can take and extend your thought process, and it can also amplify your relevancy like in the email example, it can amplify your your you know letters that you write or blog posts it can write things with good readability with good SEO it can even write snippets of code. So it’s just an augmentation tool.
How can UX learn from these patterns?
“And if we think about our UX from the point of view of how can we co -create with our users? How can we make it more like the kind of stories that ChatGPT tells, you know, it’s really good. It’s like imagining things. Sometimes you have to, sometimes it’s the wrong things. But it provides you more than just a blank canvas that you get with Word or a blank canvas that you get with Google. It provides you with the synthesis of ideas. So it lets you build. So now, all of a sudden, we’re in this paradigm where we’re scaffolding, we’re able to take a user, give them something meaningful, build on it, keep building on it, and do all the heavy lifting for them. Amplify the relevancy. Is this what you want? Is this what you want? Expand on it. Like think about this. Think about that. You know, we don’t really do that as much. We show related products, or we show customers also liked, or we show documents your colleagues are looking at with social internet software.
But that’s not the same as an imagination amplifying or an augmentation, which is like, “Hey, ChatGPT, what about this?” And ChatGPT sends something, and you go, “Eh, ignore that.” But there’s one thing in there. that you can expand upon, and then you’re back and forth. So this dance of continuous productivity and continuous relevancy is one of those hallmarks that hopefully you can bring that pattern to your work and think about your work– more as this narrative co-creation– as opposed to the “blank canvas” that we have today.
Thank you so much for tuning in. See you soon.”
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