What AI means for marketers and the user experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more commonplace and achievable, even within modest marketing budgets. But as AI slowly takes over, how do people feel about this ‘new’ technology, and what impact is it having on user experience?

As consumers, we don’t buy things for the way that they work, we buy products – products that we believe will improve our lives. To a user, Facebook is a space to share things with friends, not a complex series of machine learning techniques that attempts to mimic how your brain works. It’s actually both things, my point being that the perceived value of your product is more important than how it works, or in simpler terms: it’s the sizzle, not the sausage.

Despite often talking about clever use of big data, marketers so often get it wrong and end up delivering adverts or recommendations of little or no real relevance to the consumer. We need to prove to consumers that AI is useful and remember that there’s a big difference between giving advice to the consumer and parenting them. In order to deliver a good user experience, we need to keep on the advice side of the equation and keep the user in control of what is happening.

The perils of an over-personalised web experience
Similarly, using AI and ambient personalisation to create an over-personalised web experience can lead to consumers living in a filter bubble. By having our news feeds and search results constantly tailored to our preferences with AI, we can miss out on experiencing things outside our bubble.

Paradoxically, one of the things I appreciate when flicking through printed media like a newspaper is that I get exposed to things I’m not necessarily interested in or perhaps don’t even agree with; it helps give me a rounded view of the world. When the newspaper only shows us the things that we are already interested in, we miss out on discovering new things through our blinkered view.

Like all good design, good AI doesn’t draw attention to itself, it just works, and when it works well it delights the user.

Facebook news feed: good AI in action
Take the Facebook news feed; it uses machine learning to trim the 1,500 updates that the average Facebook user could see down to the 30–60 updates deemed most appropriate to the user. Without this use of AI, Facebook would be a mess and would fail to deliver value to its users.

Facebook edits what you see based on what it knows about you, but crucially, it also keeps the user in control by providing options to edit who or what you see in your news feed. Automatic facial recognition within Facebook photos makes common tasks, such as tagging friends, quicker and easier for users, again achieved using AI.

This is just one example of how AI can improve user experience, by responding to users’ needs and making time-consuming tasks quicker and easier. AI is all around us, we just don’t often realise it so it’s important that we use it in the right way: to make sure it helps, rather than stifles us.

3 simple rules for great AI

1. Always get permission from the user
In order to build trust, data should be voluntarily given up by the user, otherwise it may feel like they are being watched or spied on. In order to gain permission from the user, you need to explain the benefits of them doing so. It should be a mutual contract between the user and the software. For example, if I provide Google Now with my location, it’ll show me cool stuff nearby. As people want more for less in their lives, the incentive should be in the benefits of your product.

2. Always keep the user in control
Allow your users to break out of their filter bubbles, keep them in control and offer them choice. Always remember to offer useful advice through your service, but don’t stray over the line into ‘parenting’ by patronising, dictating to, or obscuring information or options from the user. Sometimes even just the illusion of control might be enough.

3. Always deliver value for the user
Good AI delights by offering more in unexpected ways. Keep your side of the contract with the user by delivering real value for them through the data you collect. Enhance user experience on the fly by being aware of the user’s context and ever-changing needs.

As an industry, if we all design with these simple rules in mind, AI will cement its self as something that the public trust and love, rather than something they fear.

By DMA guest blogger James Reece, User Experience Specialist, The Real Adventure