If you have seen “careers” and “artificial intelligence” in the same sentence, it’s likely because there is yet another article wondering whether certain jobs will soon be done faster and more reliably by an intelligent algorithm.

Employers who hire UX professionals needn’t worry about their staff being replaced by programmed intelligence any time in the near future. UX jobs are anything but routine, and they involve a high level of creativity. Creativity plus the lack of routine is where UX job security lies. Even if UX jobs aren’t disappearing, however, AI will very likely have an impact on UX careers – in fact, employers should expect to soon be adding artificial intelligence (AI) and bot-related skills and experiences to job reqs.

As AI weaves its way further into products like Siri, Cortana, Google Now, Echo, and future products yet to be named or even conceived, having employees with AI experience will become more and more valuable.

For our purposes here, we’ll be focusing on how near-term future advancements in AI are likely to affect UX careers in design, content, and research.

DESIGN AND AI

Interaction design, one of several UX design careers in the digital screen-based consumer product space, is by definition focused on users and their interaction with a product. Users take an action and the system does something. The interaction may be with a “bot,” a virtual entity that listens (typically either by keyed text input or by voice) and responds. Through a back and forth communication, the response may then be further refined until completed, when the bot either performs an action or provides the needed information.

Every screen-based bot must have an interface in which it lives. The interface will need to:

  • Start up
  • Perform whatever precursors are necessary to get to the point where interaction with the AI takes place
  • Recognize initiation of the interaction with the AI
  • Allow for some back and forth discussion as a user goal is refined
  • Provide a way to acknowledge final output and perhaps continue on to other activities

See full article: Lebson, Cory. “UX Careers and Artificial Intelligence” Aquent Blog. April 1, 2016.