My secret to designing a lovable AI-powered product
Hey there! I’m Raika, a Senior UX and Conversation Designer at Amazon. If you’re new here, welcome! You can subscribe to my Secrets to Great UX Design newsletter for weekly insights. I share actionable ways to create great experiences, grow your career and more… for designers and non-designers.
We’ve all heard it said:
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
For UX designers working on AI this means we need to be careful to not over-index on predictive UX. Human input, judgment, and context are crucial to delivering great results with AI.
Great AI UX = Implicit Inputs + Explicit Inputs
Getting predictions right requires a lot of customer data, which let’s face it, retention isn’t a given these days.
As designers, we need to be creative about how we get these inputs from customers. A combination of implicit and explicit helps us get the best outcomes.
Spotify
For today’s post, I’m going to use Spotify as an example. Don’t get me wrong, Spotify is doing lots of cool things with AI but…
What if I know next week is going to be stressful so I want to intentionally listen to more upbeat, but calming music?
What if I’m drained and need some happy music to energize me?
Or I’m tired of the music I listen to and want something drastically different to mix things up?
Today I have to go find that music for myself because the dynamic playlists they make for me (Daily Mixes, DJ mode, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Daylist, etc.) are all based on my past listening.
Personally, I mostly do this off of Spotify. And then hope that Spotify updates my taste if I want it to stick.
Instead…
Spotify could use AI to help me reduce the wild amount of options I have when picking something to listen to. Endless playlists to choose from turns into decision paralysis.
Discover Weekly (as an example) could co-create my next playlist with me by:
Giving me vibes to choose from (or give me more of X, less of Y)
Letting me create a mood board and then use my visual inspiration
Leveraging a conversational UI for a natural interface
AKA find fun and playful ways to help me play music.
"AI” All The Things! is not a great strategy when it’s 100% predictive.
Find the balance. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer what they want and then deliver on it.
Great UX both predicts and anticipates the customers’ needs and wants while giving them explicit inputs to alter or fine-tune the output.
Favorite Quote and Photo of the Week
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning
That’s it for today. Have a product or service you want me to look at? Reply to this email!
Thanks for reading!
Until next time,
raika
‘Vibes’ would be great. I prefer Apple Music’s algorithm as it seems to follow the vibe more.