Will Designers be replaced by AI & Robots?

The era of Robotics and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is approaching fast towards us. Every facet of our lives is being impacted by this new trend. According to some people, almost 2 million of manual human jobs are expected to be gone till 2030. With almost every industry and profession embracing AI because of all the perks it has to offer, UI/UX Design is not staying behind.

AI is already being successfully implemented in the field of enhanced user experience. Examples like virtual assistances, voice recognizers, and CHATBOTS are living proof of the high productivity of this technology.

Nevertheless, after all this talk, an important question arises in the mind of designers. “Like other professions, will Artificial Intelligence replace us too?”

The answer is simple: “Not any time soon”.

Yes, it can be agreed upon the fact that automating the design process would bring many benefits such as having guaranteed results each time, the easy adaption of successful DESIGN PATTERNS, and the possibility of picking the best option to use among the many hundreds. But the approach of computers towards solving every problem is always mathematical. They are fed with information that helps them learn and they, then make decisions based on it. Hence, the use of AI can be vividly successful in general designs such as that of devices or menus, etc. However, when it comes to UI, users always go for the designs which invoke an emotional attraction in them. Such designs cannot be linear. They change repeatedly after being tested, as human mood and behavior are never the same or constant. It only takes a human to understand another human. It might be possible to develop such intelligent software in the future that can adapt perfectly according to this continuously changing behavior of humans but till then, handing over the job of designing completely into the hands of AI is not a good idea. The Grid, a website released a few years ago claiming to design itself, is a great illustration of this.

Still, it’s not that design cannot be automated at all. There are many factors in the design process that AI would help making a lot easier and more efficient. Some of the areas where the collaboration of AI and UX could be fruitful are discussed below:

• Automation of basic tasks:

Small tasks in the designing process, like cropping or resizing images and color adjustment, can easily be done by intelligent computers. Some brands are already using the technology that converts graphical sketches into code. This helps the designers in saving precious time, which can then be utilized in more thought-provoking exercises, such as strategy building for the successful design of the product, etc.

• Build efficient design modules:

Artificially Intelligent computers are perfect for the learning process. They can process a large amount of data and rarely make any mistakes in decision making. Thus, when it comes to user testing, they can effectively be used to study the interaction of users with the UI interface of a product, and decide which factors are to be implemented on each of the elements that would cause in more user attraction.

• Customize User Experience:

Due to their efficiency in learning, computers can also successfully collect data from users in order to provide them a personalized experience. They can easily gather basic information like their location, their local language, the type of device they are using, etc. Based on this, they can tailor the end result of the product according to USER PREFERENCES.

Importance of AI in the field of UI design:

Machines may not be able to take over the designer work completely, as they are not able to understand the diverse behaviors of human species yet, but they are still able to assist the designers in the designing process. When repetitive and logical tasks are left for the computers to handle, designers can be more productive in other creative areas of the process. Computers that have gone through machine learning can easily measure the success of user interactions based on various factors, such as eye-tracking, voice tone, and the size and color scheme of different elements, etc.

Conclusion:

In simple words, we can confidently say that AI technology cannot replace human designers any soon. Rather, it can help them by automating basic, logical functions so they can instead focus on the reasoning and strategy related tasks, which only humans are known to be able to do so far.