I presented Four ways to think about the “Next Frontier of UX” at the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s All in for Tech Day on October 10th. I used the 4 categories that evolved from my UX Spins roadshow to frame a discussion around emerging tech areas (with a focus on AI).
UX as Impressions
- What people perceive and remember as a result of interacting with (software-enabled) products and services
- AI Frontier: Interactions where people specify the outcome they want vs. perform the steps to produce it
UX as Activities
- Methods, processes, and tools to define, design, and deliver innovative user experiences
- AI Frontier: Automating operational UX tasks while expanding insights from human behavior
UX as Capabilities
- Organizational proficiency to manage experiences for customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders
- AI Frontier: Applying AI-based tools to personalize experiences while also orchestrating experiences across contexts (organizational silos)
UX as Communities
- Communities of interest/practice and professional institutions where we study, teach, and learn about user experience (impressions, activities, capabilities).
- AI Frontier: Cross-disciplinary fields of study to support human-centered AI at a societal level
I only had 10 minutes (& 5 content slides), with 5 minutes for discussion, so this was a brief introduction only.
The audience was mostly cybersecurity and other IT service providers, with some data people (for the previous talk in the session) and one web designer. Good Q&A on things like how grocery stores are designed, going from easy-to-use interfaces to good user experiences (using ancestry research as an example), and how UX communities can help address misinformation and climate change.
Talking with one attendee later in the evening, he enjoyed it but 15 minutes was not enough: he would like a whole session devoted to talking about UX.
