Predicting the Future of UX

foreign okay good day everyone this is Dylan and I'm the founder and general manager at curious Cole and today we have a special guest with us with our regular working in ux design webinar and podcasts so today we have Gideon Simmons from uh is Israel and he's he grew up in Israel and has been based in Singapore for a while so let me just do a short introduction about his work uh some of the very interesting things about Gideon is that he is part technologist and part psychologists so Gideon specializes in designing experiences with emerging Technologies such as Ai iot and Automation and brings over 15 years of experience of working in startups corporates and Consulting where he worked on a wide variety of products and projects ranging from fintech all the way to e-learning so we have Gideon here today and I think one of the very interesting things about Gideon is that he's he actually studied computer science uh back in Israel and uh but he ended up in the view of ux design and and today he's he's been the hater product and hater product and design um in in his last role as well so we're gonna speak to him about technology and we're gonna speak to him how ux is evolving as a career option for everyone and how we how we as ux designers are going to be affected by the new technology and how we can work with these new emerging technologies that are coming up such as AI tools generative AI such as all the other uh stuff that's going on out there in in the commercial market so Gideon I'm glad to have you here on the show thank you daily I'm very glad to be here as well um just just for the record I have a double major in Psychology and Computer Sciences wow okay so now I get the the introduction uh with which which is part Technologies and part psychologists so tell us tell us a little bit more like how how do you see things differently as someone who is trained as a technologist and trained as a psychologist like how how differently do you see the work in ux design well great question you know I think one of the things when you finish your degree and you enter the the workforce you have to kind of like throw away almost a lot of the things that you learned and start kind of really learn how to build products um and I'm very fortunate to have both you know the psychology and the Computer Sciences and um the reason it kind of made sense for me is that um I kind of feel like the sweet spot is when you bring the both of them together and that was I guess kind of the Catalyst to why I'm doing ux for so many years um yeah that's that's really great and as a as a technologist I guess it's easy as someone who's been training computer science I guess it's easier for you to work with Engineers has that been true so far oh yeah totally so you know I started my career kind of doing wearing every hat I could my first job was a designer actually but within just like uh two weeks they fired the the software developer and they told me if I don't learn software development then they'll fire me too and that's that's how I learned that and so for kind of the first few years I was actually building everything you know designing um coding product managing and kind of doing everything possible in in the companies that we're working for um and so I can really emphasize with every possible person in the room when we have kind of a team meeting yeah I I know they have a term of Someone Like You in Silicon Valley they call you a unicorn right someone who can design who can code and can do product management and then you can do psychology right I don't know what's rarer than a unicorn yeah and he's rarely unicorn in Singapore Maybe and tell us a little bit more what what brought you what brought you over here to Singapore like the Israel Tech scene is also equally as vibrant and there's a lot of amazing and great products that are Global uh such as Skype which is which which is built by an Israeli team what's that uh believe WhatsApp as well I mean there's a lot of great there's really Innovation so what brought you to Singapore yeah totally I mean thanks for saying that I I really I'm a big fan of everything going on in Israel in terms of technology and and things like that um with that said you know when I started my career I actually my first job was in Singapore and um when I when I kind of went back to Israel to to work everybody thought I was like the cool guy who made it in Singapore overseas uh and then that's how I got a few um interesting projects off of that and when I got back to working for projects in Singapore everybody thought I was the cool guy from Israel who was doing amazing Technologies there so it's really kind of a point of view thing I think both countries have a lot of interesting companies and a lot of talent and Innovation happening by the way I've actually traveled to Israel myself several years ago as a Backpacker and I've actually visited what what we call startup Nation right so there's a very famous book called startup nation and it was written around this country called Israel and they were sharing all the amazing things about why Israeli is so the Israel's uh our uh the people in Israel are so Innovative um yeah what what do you think what do you think is the secret like um of your country like in terms of like being the second most Venture funded uh in the world right after the United States um great question I I may be not the best um Ambassador for Israeli Tech to be honest um but if I if I were to put my kind of um point of view around it it's really um kind of like a machine that got built up over time you know they're just kind of like um a lot of smart people kick-started it with Innovative companies and Technologies and all that and it just kind of blew up um you know you all of a sudden have a lot of really amazing talent who did the most complex algorithms in the world and you have the best sales people who went overseas and sold things and so Israel just kind of started From a handful of innovation and then just kind of managed to organically grow into a Powerhouse of talent um so and that's the advantage there you know you go there and you work with people with so much experience um that it's it's mind-blowing yeah that's that's really good and talking about Talent let's let's get right into ux uh Talent you've been you've been a product design leader for more than 15 years right now and uh you've definitely seen how this profession of ours mature over the years so I was just wondering you know um what's what's your view about ux design as a practice today and what's your view about it being a practice in future uh thanks thanks for asking that Dylan and and by the way before I even start to talk about it I mean you you are also like that you know I think I'm really fortunate to have this conversation with you and uh we've probably been in ux for the same amount of time and seeing the industry grow and um to be honest you've done so much to to kind of grow the industry and the contribution to the community is just commendable um thank you so much yeah and and what I'm gonna share is kind of like a mix of things that I've seen in my career for my lens a lot of it happened in Singapore as well yeah that's great yeah but I think uh to kind of like really understand where we are today it's good to look back a bit how ux kind of evolved over the years if that's okay yeah I think I think it's worth definitely looking at the past in order to imagine the future okay so I'm gonna start with the a ux trivia question um to see if people hopefully you don't Google it or use chat gpp to to get the answer but who coined the term ux and at what year did this happen you can answer in the chat you know that is a very tough one I I I I I I I wasn't I'm not sure if we actually have to learn ux history in school it's not yeah I don't think there is a ux history course yet um but I think we have one answer um almost right Don Norman yeah sounds yeah sounds like what I would answer as well Don Norman is definitely actually yeah maybe maybe the Xerox corporation that would be my guess but someone someone there like in the Xerox corporation in the 1970s I think I think we have uh somebody from IBM and another Donald Norman in the 90s any other takes as somebody Googled it yet I think thank you thank you um thank you for responding audience and yeah what what would the answer be the answer is yeah it's definitely Donald Norman kind of he's the The Godfather and creator of of a lot of the things that we know about ux these days um it was the term was coined in 1993 which is exactly 30 years ago from today uh and the interesting thing about that is that um during these days ux after coined the term and you know there was some ux stuff happening before that just wasn't called that um for around 20 years uh ux was really just in the Academia world you know it wasn't really um in the industry except for a few companies like apple um and IBM and companies like that but everyone else wasn't really practicing much things around it and aware of it um it only really started to enter the industry kind of between the years of 2010 to 2017. uh what happened in these years which is really interesting um that's that's kind of like um years where ux becomes more kind of part of product workflows a lot of companies becoming aware of it it's a it's a title it's a job title that people hold actually holding companies um there is also a bit of a weird um kind of a sub thing happening which is Rise of the ux charlatans um that's people who kind of sprinkle the word ux and a lot of terminology and they kind of get a lot of Consulting projects around that and the most interesting thing that happened is that during those seven years uh ux becomes this big umbrella term that kind of sucks almost half of the the terms you know in the industry into it you know it kind of like interaction design a lot of things from management consulting um you know usability studies and all this kind of stuff kind of all go into a ux umbrella think about Venn diagrams with a lot of stuff in ux in in the middle of it that's how it looked like in those years another small trivia question this one will be a bit quicker when was the first ux Community event in Singapore at what year wow this this is testing Singapore history by the way I I while people are answering this question I just want to also say it's so interesting in a time we live in especially as ux practitioners because you know imagine we're doing physics and Sir Isaac Newton is already dead for more than 100 years right but we live in a time where the person who is actually practicing and researching on it is still alive and I think that that is actually something remarkable about this view it was still emerging and then it's still developing but anyway we got we got an answer and yeah I guess um yeah he's saying 2008 or 2009 but actually it was on 2012. uh it's an interesting time as well because um there is you know if you ever heard of usba is the ux professional association um they actually were called UPA um all these years usability professional association and in 2012 they also changed it to USPA so that's really goes to show that those are the years where it really became more mainstream um there were a lot of really interesting use cases around those days as well like um the 300 million dollar button by Jared spool and a lot of these cool ux hit maps for mobile apps and things like that if you remember but it kind of like these are the things that made it more popular but after 2017 until today what happens is ux really starts to explode I mean uh you know it's kind of like becoming everywhere your your mother your sister is talking about how the ux of a product sucks it's usually the negative things that they mentioned ux not the positive things unfortunately um but the other thing that starts to happen in those past six years is that the umbrella starts to break apart and um from what you know ux being like everything and everything um it started to kind of like break apart into product designers to service designers um ux researchers ux writers and so it's kind of like starts you can see like the industry getting more um understanding of where all these bits of ux fit in in the organization and how to kind of um specialize within it um and when when we're talking about these specializations you know like what what are you most bullish about like is there any specific view where you kind of see we're all hailing to us too oh great question I think we're gonna attach this as well a bit later when we talk about the future part of it yeah but but definitely you know one of the things that you you see today is that um it kind of like okay in the past few years there is a lot of new schools kind of pumping out a lot of ux designers out to the world um and you you definitely know one of them here which is amazing I used to teach for them yes of course I do and what happens is a lot of the people joining the workforce um they uh they kind of like once they start to do the job they realize you know then maybe they are not really this all-around ux designers and they really start to specialize after that so a lot of people who kind of even though they maybe made a career switch from an architect or a teacher or whatever into ux um all of a sudden they are making kind of the second switch to something more specialized within ux I see a lot of people going to become ux researchers a lot of them are people who just kind of didn't feel they are that strong in the interaction design or the product design side you see people who feel really good about ux writing and they do amazing job there and you know and companies need need this kind of specializations as well and I I think it's completely mentioned that those specializations get in because honestly speaking as a as an educator who has actually seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people go through our program um we don't Advocate that all of them should become ux designers in fact for some of them we we believe that they would be much more suitable to become ux Consultants especially if they are good at talking and selling and facilitating or become good researchers especially if they have research backgrounds so there are actually very specific specializations that and we don't believe that all of them should necessarily fit into the moral of being a ux designer yeah yeah I totally agree and I think um you know to be honest I work with a lot of people who did this path and um because of that kind of starting point which is very much of a generalist um they get kind of this imposter syndrome you know this has been a very hard subject for past few years and it's real you know a lot of people are a bit scarred of it you know they kind of start um a bit on the wrong foot um they get a bit burned out and then they start to specialize and switch a bit to something a bit more comfortable um so I think kind of one of the interesting shifts that we should be seeing in in ux education and all that is people kind of like um figuring out what they should specialize uh in earlier before they hit the workforce and like you said you know if they are really good talkers and they should be ux Consultants um they should kind of like realize that earlier before they really get into that kind of uncomfortable situation when they joined the first job yeah that makes a lot of sense if you have any thoughts about you know Tech layoffs right now and I am I'm I'm also empathizing with your situation you're currently in transition as well so um across the board Tech is like laying off people uh including ux researchers including these Specialists that we talk about what what are your thoughts about this General situation at the moment um that's a great question you know um of course whenever something like this happens uh it triggers a few things you know there is of course people who are left behind um and have to kind of own up to a lot more work than they they are used to um and a lot more work also includes doing other kind of you know other parts of other people's job you know if they're they're kind of a designer they would do more um of the adjacent roles as well yes that makes sense yeah so that's one part of it the other part is the people being laid off um which is of course unfortunate um they have to really think um how can they find their next role in a more kind of sustainable and long-term way you know and that's that's a big challenge right now because you you don't really see where where the light is you know because so many companies are laying off um at the same time um you are competing against uh talent that comes from you know meta and a lot of companies like Google yeah so you really have to strategize a lot more harder to to find your your best next role yeah I think I think that makes a lot of sense and when when I see this as an educator I my heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by this layoff but also at the same time um Junior designers who are actually trying to get into the field their experience like much much tougher uh kind of situation because there are less jobs out there and there are more Talent out there so that's kind of like an imbalance but on the upside I also see this as an opportunity because I I see companies becoming smarter about the kind of people they want to hire the kind of products that they are building and these companies are actually going to get stronger um and we're still seeing some companies uh doing hiring right like agencies and consulting firms for example uh they're still continuing their highest um the traditional Industries like the banks they're still continuing doing the highest so I'm very very optimistic that Industries are still transforming and ux is definitely still much needed and and we now even have ai right like that's that's coming into the scene and um I think we before this this chat we briefly had a conversation about a a very interesting plugin that we we saw I'm not sure if you're ready to talk about the future yet but um I think I think now would be a good time yeah totally I mean the plugin you're talking about um is a homegrown um plugin by a Singaporean guy called Chen Moon yeah that's right yeah um it's a figma plug-in I just recently surfaced up on your social networks if you if any of you seen it before but basically it's a it's a figma plugin and it kind of takes uh text as an input and generates uh wireframes yeah yeah I did an experiment I kind of asked him to generate an and screen for an app for dog lovers um gave it like a prompt uh it it can remind the user to walk the dog and also offers tips about how to groom and train dogs um and yeah like um it's pretty pretty cool it just generated from your perspective as a design leader if I were to ask you to rate the AI in terms of generating a piece of wireframe uh out of a score one to ten attending the highest score how would you rate the AI in the in doing in doing the initial drop um I would give it a two right now sorry but but it is there it's I don't think the The Right Use of it is to take whatever it generates as as the thing you're gonna bring to your stakeholders and to the users um it's really a way to kind of quickly generate and scaffold assets and ideas you know um so when when you kind of like um do this and you can even iterate on the text input that you want um you'll have some kind of nice starting points and nice ideas to work with and do what should be the right design eventually yeah yeah so I I think that's cool because to me this is like only the beginning right and it's it's a very exciting beginning even though you're giving it a two out of ten um I actually had an opportunity to speak to chenmu um briefly because we're gonna invite him for one of our future sessions I hope you guys will tune in when he comes on board and speaks about how he designed this plug-in but uh the plugin is called wireframe designer uh and it's actually on the figma community itself so please feel free to check it out um and just type the search term wireframe designer and he taught me specifically that it's a weekend project that he did um and and so everything is meant to be very very simple uh and he's looking to make some improvements um so if that does happen or if Adobe suddenly decides that tomorrow we're going to create a software that that does that does uh exactly what channels plugin does and and even way better right Adobe is actually doing a lot of things around generative AI I just saw them release a software called Firefly so yeah what what's gonna happen to us as as ux designers Gideon well great question um and that's I think that's the the cool thing about this discussion is that uh you know we're trying to predict the future um that seems very close I I don't think it's that close yet um but at the same time uh we're just predicting it you know we don't know whether that's that's gonna happen in this way um my kind of belief is two things one is um those tools was will get better definitely um and will still be a tool that catalyzes better designs you know it's it's shouldn't be the one that creates the the end result anytime soon maybe in the in the distant future yes but for now um you still need kind of to massage it or adjust it into the form that you want it to be um but you use it to kind of scaffold and generate um you know some ideas and starting points yeah I think you raised a really good point because it it doesn't the machine doesn't replace the national necessary problem solving skills and critical thinking skills we have as ux designers right so even even you rated it to our ten yes it gives some suggestive kind of like wireframes but in terms of craft craftsmanship in terms of thinking through every single Pixel I think I think it still needs a human being at least for a good number of years right yeah on the other hand um let's kind of like remove the AI from from the equation for a while um you know I just spoke to one of my ex-colleags uh who is probably one of the most amazing designers I work with um and at the company we worked at he came up with such an amazing design system um and you know very good polished set of figma components um and screens and everything you know so and he did it in such a good and efficient way there is a very clear kind of hierarchy in terms of components there is a very clear understanding of what you should use when more or less and what happened um with with that team is basically now a lot of people who are not the ux designers are actually coming up with the screens for the for the product and that includes product managers sometimes the sales team when they're going to customers and pitching things to them um and they're just basically taking this really efficient set of building blocks and kind of mixing and matching it together it works really well because there is a very clear convention there there is boundaries there is um a language you know there's consistency and what brings the more interesting question here is do you do we really need the ux designers to um to kind of like push and move buttons around and add another text field and all that you know is that really the the big value that they have in the in the future and that's something to think about yeah that's a that's a really good point and and it sounds like an amazing design system I I had the opportunity to product manage a design system uh in one point at one point in my career and I was I was just wondering like in like having product managers having business owners uh or even marketing people do some of these wireframes themselves um what if they are doing it right if they can kind of create these wireframes which some of them are already doing so as I'm also training some of them um to be proficient with the software that we use um what do you see the role of ux designers being especially in a larger organization right like what what role should they play so that's a really good question um you know before we go in there I'll add as well that um a side of Design Systems working this way um and a side of AI generating stuff for you these days um there are a lot of kind of low code or no code tools out there which allow any kind of business user as well to create screens and actually even push them live as a product um and it just kind of like makes the uh basically makes the future a lot more uncertain for answering that question for designers you know I mean is that really the value that they had should they be the ones kind of changing the color of a button or or things like that is that you know have you gone through the whole QR score course just to do that or is there something added value that you can bring to the table um what's going to happen in the future That's my kind of prediction is that anyone who is kind of like a generalist is going to be spoiled with so many tools to empower their work you know even like GPT that you can generate a ux research discussion guide for example I tried that and gave amazing results um so if I'm like the generalist of the future if I'm let's say a product manager I may be able to do almost all of what I need without designers without developers which is even better they're not having designers of course and what am I going to need ux designers for and that's that's kind of the question that that you ask so what I kind of predict for um people are bringing up some really good examples of no Code and low code platforms um what I kind of foresee is that ux designers from there that kind of stage are gonna kind of end up either two ways one is kind of becoming that generalist you know maybe becoming the the next product manager or kind of like a one-man show that creates everything and then works with business users with sales and does all the work you know don't rely on developers or or other people that's going to be one breed of ux designers of the future and the other breed of ux designers of the future are Specialists that kind of um find a niche for themselves that AI doesn't do very well yet you know I mean so it's kind of like fighting against time um how how AI advances um they'll be the ones kind of bringing the Craft um the human touch you know I'm trying to kind of talk to users understand them translate the insights even those things are catching up on AI side there's tools that analyze ux research insights as well out there kind of cropping up um so it's it's kind of like if you're not going into that generalist side of things you'll end up kind of really specializing in something that AI cannot do yet and be kind of fighting against time to uh you know to kind of catch up with it I think that's definitely a very interesting prediction and uh that's that's yet to be seen like how uh what are the actual actual specializations that will survive because even if I think about specializations in ux like for example content design now writers are saying oh dear wow chat GPT can like replace writers right so then what happens now right like what's the value of a Content designer in a team um and what if one day uh AI tools can just take like very very raw qualitative data from like forums and stuff like that and start giving you synthesis and Analysis within that sort of replace uh the job of a ux researcher in in this case so I think it's very inevitable as as as as people who are working in a Technology field that we need to work hand in hand with AI and really just embrace it and and it sounds like we should do less busy work and more thinking work from what I hear from you Gideon yeah totally you know it's not gonna happen that fast that's that's the thing that people are a bit misled these days I mean chat chipity kind of dropped the bomb on everyone um it just happened recently in a few months everybody thinks they understand AI much more than they really do and you know everybody's talking about Ai and it's the new um I don't know what big data or new some other buzzword that we had a few years or months ago um but it's it's still an emerging um tool you know it's a still an emerging domain we have amazing stuff happening on kind of generative imagery and that's definitely gonna help ux designers you know even come up with pictures for personas and small stuff like that all the way to imagery across the product and things like that um but for all these like um generating uh you know UI text content and stuff like that it's emerging it's not 100 proven as well for a long term you know I mean we're it's only gonna really see fruits when when you see it after um I don't know what one year um performing as well as as kind of a human generated content and it might do that there is a good chance that it's gonna do that but is it really sustainable you know um forever are you always gonna be kind of churning um AI generated Things based on already existing AI generated things and so on it becomes this Loop yeah that makes a lot of sense um do you think then it's a fad because the last fat we have uh which which meta got around including changing its name was the metaverse so do you think do you think it's gonna be a fat like like crypto like metaverse that like that was like that was like last year right 2022 yeah yeah totally I mean it's definitely gonna be a fad um and like you're saying you know metaverse um and we know feds come and go every every few years of course um this is definitely gonna be something as well one thing that you learn over time is that um you know if you look back maybe five years ago um AI was also a pretty strong buzzword there was kind of um there was kind of like a time that it it was really exciting and everybody was looking forward and thinking how to design with AI as well as a ux practitioner and things like that but these days it's very kind of mainstream um you know you're I don't know what your refrigerator uses AI to determine the the Heat or you have voice assistance everywhere AI is pretty much embedded in a lot of products that we have day to day and I think that's a lot of this is going to happen to things like the generative Ai and you know chat GPT just to be there as part of your day-to-day in in the way that we kind of normalized it to be you know it kind of like organically falls in the right place eventually and and getting I think you raise a good point right we've we've been talking so far about AI competing with us as as designers as product people but we haven't really talked about the reality that now ai is integrated into a lot of software and to a lot of Hardware so how do you think like that changes the Paradigm uh as a designer right now we got a design for new types of interfaces new types of interactions yeah what's what's your take on that yeah totally a very valid question Dylan I think this is one of the things that especially people like you who run a design um you know ux school you have to really think what are the skills that ux designers need to to kind of stay resilient to to know how to work with these Technologies as well to design with them um and I think uh we're there there are things that aren't really taught yet in schools that need to start to kind of come into to place a lot of it is gonna be just using these new tools you know like chat GPT and stuff like that that's the easy load hanging fruits um but to really understand how to design with AI I think there is a few things that I would look at one of them is prompt engineering that's a very kind of emerging um skill that people need to to know if anybody familiar with prompt engineering um that's that's a very new term to me so if I get you directly it's from pront p-r-o-m-p-t engineering you said yeah yeah prompt engineering is basically how you ask AI questions you know it's kind of like um let's say you you put in something in chat GPT and you say um can you write me a discussion guide for ux research for so and so and so um it's going to speed out a certain result for you and it may not be the the best thing that you you're looking for but if you just change a bit the text to something else you add a few more interesting things um yeah exactly the AI whisper so if you had like um and I wanted to kind of ask about so-and-so feature and I wanted to ask another thing and give me another thing about this feature and I want to understand people's sentiment for that is gonna Pro give you another result that's different and more relevant to you and that's really what prompt engineering is it's kind of knowing how to prompt the the AI in the best way you know it's going to be useful for generating images uh text wireframes using 10 moves amazing plugin version seven and um and everything so that's that's a skill I think people start to need to learn and there is some secret sources it's it's a lot about trial and error but I think definitely people can actually teach it and and teach some secrets of what works and what doesn't work yeah I absolutely agree I think in preparation for this particular interview I actually went to play with leonardo.ai which is a competitor to Mid journey and I was spending like a good couple of hours trying to figure out how to generate right the best image and initially it was kind of weird alien very odd looking skin and stuff like that but eventually I got it and a lot of it is about the data set that you that you prompt inside uh and the kind of images that that is being prompted in order for the AI to recognize right including like the quality of the images and stuff like that so for example having being able to prom um like very high quality photos from like fashion shoots and stuff in it increases the quality of the output that that it generates which is what AI is about right the the output is very dependent on the input itself yeah yeah and exactly like what you said you really have to a bit kind of reverse engineer in your brain how it actually does it and test it out you know so imagine you you learn this as a skill earlier you can save a lot of hours and do really cool work later on um that's amazing and and I think there were other areas as well right like you you yeah briefly mentioned about Voice assistance right so voice assistants are going to be AI powered are we going to look at more voice related ux type of work and merging um I I really started seeing a little bit of that on choppy you know like voice search and stuff like that but what what's your take are you are we gonna experience more voice related um uh experiences yeah totally and and I think the the difference in how we design moving forward not only for voice but also for you know the actual chatbots eventually they do pretty much the same thing it's just one is with the text and the other with the voice um is that designers need to really think how to design um let's call it like personalities instead of um chat scripts you know I mean until now when we design for a chatbot we really look at it in a very um sequential kind of logic you know I I enter a chatbot for a bank and I want to get something and then the chatbot is just trying to figure out whether I want to look at the loans or uh I don't know the new credit card um and then kind of fish that uh thing and then move on to the next part of the chat so it's very kind of script based design um and very logical kind of Step points but when you look at how AI like chat GPT is moving on um AI is is not so much going to follow a specific script instead they become like an expert in a certain domain and you can kind of chat with it more naturally and so as a designer you really need to kind of design what this new let's say chatbot or voice assistant is an expert at and what's their personality like and how they should respond to you and how quickly should they get you to the result that you need versus how you know things like that and you wouldn't really think about how to kind of design a script a very sad script it's more like designing kind of the body of knowledge that it should have and things around that yeah that's something I think that that's quite dependent on the AI modeling I'm not an expert in this view but I I understand there are different types of models that generate different types of responses uh for CH even for something as simple as chat Bots um so what what should designers do right like right now we're looking at an emergence of multiple Technologies multiple interaction touch points as designers other than doing our jobs as of what we're already doing like going to figma and doing what we do or doing user research what else should we be doing as designers in order to in order to be like proactive about this type of change so my best advice is to find your friend in your circles that's a data scientist and buy him or her coffee and um and start picking their brains to understand you know how how AI works you know I think that's that's the most fundamental thing that I think would be give you the best Roi for coffee for a cost of a coffee cup you know I can take them to toast box and it's just like two dollars and you get a lot of uh that's good advice yeah um I think really starting from that point you know it's really hard to design for something that you don't understand um if you do that it's similar to prompt engineering just kind of trying your luck with different stuff and see if it works but if you really have a bit more insight on what's what's happening inside um you're able to kind of do a much better job and much faster and more effectively with it yeah that you'll notice with AI as well is that it's not perfect it's not linear you know um it gives you predictions kind of like our our call today where it's doing predictions of the future um or based on the data set that you give it and when AI gives you a result um it's not always the correct you know in some cases it's going to be amazingly accurate in some cases it's going to be very poorly accurate and um and you need to design around these two scenarios um in a very thoughtful way you know what happens if the AI is not very confident in the result that it gives you you give it a picture of a a coffee mug and it tells you I'm only 10 sure it's a coffee mug how do you use that and give some value to the user um you know versus the situation when the AI tells you I'm 99 sure it's a coffee mug you have to really think how to design Within These two scenarios and with this new limitation um that's stuff that we haven't really done as designers before it's always been very deterministic you know you click a button and then it goes to the next screen you add you enter your age and then it tells you oh your age is 83 or whatever you know I mean but now we are dealing with things that the result is not always as expected when it comes back to the user I think that's extremely interesting especially for those of you who are working in the field of like search design right um your your problems are not necessarily predictable as well and and the search results are also quite varied when we think about it and and you mentioned a point about designing for for a deterministic outcome versus an indeterministic outcome which is very very different uh and this indominis indeterministic outcome even so when the AI presents the result or the technology presents the result we as human beings might not be fully able to tell whether that's true as well right so as as ux designers we need to also consider that and and do some assistance around that area and tell people hey actually that might be this might be 70 true or just might be 30 true um so I I think that's that's a very interesting way to look at it that I haven't quite considered yeah and actually just to add on that sometimes um you have to ask the user to correct the AI and learn from that you know so that's one other challenge is that the AI May spit out something and um the user actually knows it's a line you know they are human beings and they know it's a coffee cup or a lion or whatever it is um you can ask the the user to correct um to say is this correct or not um and if they kind of give you consistent inputs you can train the AI to be a bit better that's another thing that um we need to really consider these scenarios as designers moving forward yeah it sounds like as I was like AI is doing its infancy and we still need to teach it as human beings even though it's it's it's a prodigy uh in its own right like it's kind of a Wonder child it can do a lot of amazing things right now but it's still a child and it needs guidance um and as designers I think uh there's also I I hear from you that's also the opportunity for us to to embrace these Technologies and play around in our own free time the tools itself and and just kind of figure out hey you know what what exactly can I do with it right because it is it is quite inevitable that these tools are going to be a greater part of our Lives as I'm hearing it um and they're gonna get even more powerful as we come along yeah do you have anything else to add to the future of ux yeah absolutely I mean one thing is uh for I mean this is specifically for the people who think that AI is going to take their ux job um and don't be afraid it's not gonna happen that soon to my opinion um one of the main reasons is we we give ourselves too much credit you know like I think about it daily and if you were the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs AI entrepreneur are you gonna build a tool for ux designers or are you going to solve a much bigger problem you know like oil and gas or health um social need you know things like that um do we really deserve uh better tools compared to other things in the world that's one question you should ask yourself so if there is going to be investment in empowering ux designers and all that is probably going to come from within a small community um people like chenmue who is doing uh really kind of good job for for the community it will be a handful of companies that may not get amazing amount of funding just to do that and like you said at the beginning Dylan is like companies like figma will probably start kind of absorbing all of the good stuff from outside and bringing it in-house and that's where the Innovation is gonna really blow up you know and become more mainstream but I wouldn't worry about you know such a big disruption in our work just kind of like better empowerment and I think people will start organically to learn how to empower their work with with these new tools um and organically find kind of the the human touch element that they bring into the table and their place within it um so that's that's really the the main kind of statement I would like to say and and thank you for making that statement Gideon because that's a very assuring point of view and I think it's also very logical because uh why would why would anyone else want to disrupt the industry for just the sake of disrupting an industry and even today uh or recently Elon Musk announced that he's actually dabbling with the idea of creating his own AI startup uh and it's going to be called Truth GPT so that people can tell whether something is the truth uh that's being AI generated uh itself so I I think there's so many so many world problems like global warming fake news uh that that that's worth paying attention to crimes for example or poverty um so I I think tools that disrupt the design industry um as you said is going to be remain to a handful of people who are interested about the industry and and most likely it's going to be developed to help us with our work rather than to to replace us yeah without any other points of view that you like to bring into today's conversation because I think we at the start we spoke about the history of ux and then we talk about some of its futures um we talk about a trend which is AI uh as well as some other some other elements of what the future of ux and its practice is going to be like as designers being affected by it are there any additional things you'd like to add to the conversation um not so much additional things but I think maybe we can shout out a bit on some tools that are emerging and um and also I think would be interesting later on to see if people from the participants from the audience have kind of a wish list of a ux tool that uses Ai and makes their job much better but I'll start with some some of the things that I've seen so there are tools that you know very simple things like generator color Palace using AI font pairing which is an interesting one always a headache unless you're good at typography um worry-free generated photos this is an interesting one because uh you know mid journey and things like that you're still not sure if you can use it because of copyright issues um so there are tools that are I mean Firefly by Adobe is another one um so tools that are emerging where you can kind of use the the generated imagery a bit more worry-free um we talked about text to wireframes by our Singaporean guy there is another Singaporean company called Pebble which actually you you put up photos of products and it generates the background so you'll see like your lipstick on the Alps or some something cool like that on the beach um that's that's a Singaporean startup from um ex-colic of mine called Alfred nice partner yeah um there is a there is tools that analyze ux research data like I mentioned there is tools that take screenshots and then create the design assets in figma for it so you can just start using them there is a really interesting tool we talked about metaverse that actually generates 3D assets you know for the metaverse like little cars and animals and this is another interesting one also a homework tool in Singapore really good for productivity and and your peace of mind it's a tool that generates your performance with you as a as a team member based on your slack messages yeah I would love that and Gideon before you move on with more tools where we're going to compile this right so uh if you're able to I'm gonna get that list from you and for those of you who are subscribers to our newsletter uh you're gonna get a copy of that list and we're also going to put it um on our YouTube channel so do remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel as well um yeah what would any thing else that sort of like caught your attention um there is definitely a lot but I'm gonna stop here I think it's just maybe a question to ask what is your dream tool um that's a great question like for the for the audience who are joining us live tonight thank you for coming from all over the world uh we have people from Singapore India Japan Australia uh and wondering what other country because not all of you are speaking and Malaysia of course some of my students are there so yeah what what is your wish list what is your desired tool um if we are going to design an AI to around it as ux designers okay I'll start with my wish list uh while people are lost of course so one is a product a tool that auto adjusts screens to optimize it you know like there is always this question whether the hamburger menu should be on the right side or on the left side um let the tool kind of test it out on different audiences measure the performance and adjust it automatically um so the ux designers can do more important work uh that's why the other one is um this is dear to my heart um something that sees whether the everything is on brand in the product you know if you kind of create a new screen with new text copy is it using your tone of voice your design language or brand language um that would be a really cool auditing tool another generating tool to to my opinion those are those are really good ones um I think that as designers there are so many things we're irritated about how uh when we do design like you know certain things are not good enough or not published enough or we just need input that comes more easily so yeah that's that's definitely those ideas um I don't see any from the audience right now maybe because it's in the evening in Singapore everyone's a little tired um yeah I think I think everyone's saying that's really cool Gideon uh those two it would be nice that if those tools exist okay hope to hear some ideas uh when you guys and it sounds like and it sounds like you're quite open you as as someone you're quite open to chatting about um topics like these so what's what's the best way people can reach out to you and um and are you like open to mentoring and coffee you know what's what's your take oh yeah 100 uh I'm on LinkedIn um so just I think that would be the best way to reach me these days okay you can find me as Gideon Simon's okay yeah so for those of you who are listening in and you don't have a visual prompt uh it's g-i-d-o-n-s-i-m-o-n-s uh Gideon assignments and you can find him on LinkedIn he's open to chatting with you if you're interested in technology uh and of course like he he is also someone who would like to give back to the design industry and uh girian are you open to mentoring people as well yeah totally I'm I'm actually mentoring a few people and two companies right now as well awesome awesome and yeah I think Gideon Gideon is someone I met that actually has a very unique mix of of the technology side and the ux design side so uh will be very interesting especially for those of you who have very similar backgrounds uh either from psychology or from computer science maybe you want to have a chat with Gideon in detail about how you want to grow your career as well and with that I think we've had a very fruitful conversation today and we've discussed so much mainly centered around AI but also around the implications of AI and how we should work together with AI as designers and be considerate about the kind of output that AI generates because someone needs to think about the interaction and the experience around voice around chat for example and and this is not something that's usually considered when we're designing very static and predictable type of outcomes in this case so it's been a wonderful conversation tonight Gideon um and we're looking forward to having uh more conversations with you in future same here thank you so much Dylan for having me thank you Gideon and thank you everyone for attending and we shall catch you in next month's working in ux design

Channel: CuriousCore

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Id: SFObsgLE0Ik

Length: 60min 30sec (3630 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023