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NN/g UX Podcast

The Nielsen Norman Group (NNg) UX Podcast is a podcast on user experience research, design, strategy, and professions, hosted by Senior User Experience Specialist Therese Fessenden. Join us every month as she interviews industry experts, covering common questions, hot takes on pressing UX topics, and tips for building truly great user experiences. For free UX resources, references, and information on UX Certification opportunities, go to: www.nngroup.com The Nielsen Norman Group (NNg) UX Podcast is a podcast on user experience research, design, strategy, and professions, hosted by Senior User Experience Specialist Therese Fessenden. Join us every month as she interviews industry experts, covering common questions, hot takes on pressing UX topics, and tips for building truly great user experiences. For free UX resources, references, and information on UX Certification opportunities, go to: www.nngroup.com

Transcribed podcasts: 41
Time transcribed: 22h 36m 34s

This graph shows how many times the word ______ has been mentioned throughout the history of the program.

This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast.
I'm Samita Tinkala. We have a special bonus episode for you with one of our co-founders,
Don Norman, and Sarah Gibbons, Vice President and NNG. Now in this episode, we focus on one
question. What will the role of designers be as AI and other technologies expand? As someone
relatively newer to this field and discipline, when compared to Don and Sarah, I've always valued
the insights from those who have navigated through significant technology shifts like the one we're
experiencing with AI today. AI is changing faster than we can sometimes process, and it will probably
feel like that for a while. The recent tech layoffs have also not spared UX professionals,
adding to the uncertainty about our future roles in this rapidly changing environment.
While there's a lot we don't know about AI, I hope you still find this conversation as encouraging I
did, leaving you embracing uncertainty as a potential opportunity.
Okay, Sarah and Don. As we know, new technologies are, well, technology, and they offer great
opportunities for designers, but if they develop the skills to take advantage of these opportunities.
So what do you, or what will be the role of designers as AI and other technologies proliferate
and grow more powerful? So I think, first of all, I think, start using them now. That in and of
itself is the most important, I think, message for our audience is use them, learn them, don't be scared
of them. And I think you will quickly learn as a user how horrible the user experience is. And I think
it's a really interesting kind of paradox because the technology itself, we don't even know what it's
quite capable of yet. And I think that's going to continue to change. And thinking about its impact
that it can have across so many different industries and verticals and in these kind of niche areas is
incredible, but only if people know how to use it. And so I think that, you know, there's a lot of
doomsdayers out there that AI is going to replace all of us and that society is going to use it wrong.
And I think that apprehension is appropriate, but I don't think that it has to be at the cost of
optimism. And I think we, as designers, are uniquely situated to understand how people are going to be
able to use and leverage this technology and make it more, more feasible to actually leverage. So your
question, right, which is how are designers going to play a role in AI? Well, I think there's two ways to think
about it. It's ways to, it's the designers that are going to design these tools that are actually usable. And then
it's how we ourselves as practitioners can leverage these tools. And they're two very different
conversations and audience. And I actually want to start, I think, with the latter, because it's
probably more of our audience, which is how do you use these tools in your everyday? And I always think
about it as an assistant or an intern, right? It's not going to be perfect. You're going to need to
double check the work. And you don't want to assign or hand off a really important deliverable, because that
would be the equivalent of an intern doing it. But I think in terms of starting to play with it, whether it's
shaping an early research plan, and getting ideas for different tasks, I use it a lot in ideation. So I can gather a
lot of different ideas really quickly. And then I use it at the very end of the design
process to kind of fine tune something that I've produced. And I think that there's a lot of
different ways and places that designers and practitioners can start leveraging AI. And right
now, it just starts with actually signing up and using some of these tools.
Yeah, you gave a complex answer. So I had to write down notes along the way.
I thought you were going to show us something.
Well, I'm going to tell you something. So first of all,
Even better.
You have to remember that these tools are really young. They've been out about a year. And so what is
happening now is that it has surprised everybody, including the people who developed them, about how,
first of all, what kind of capabilities they have. And second of all, how popular they have become.
But let me tell you that in five or 10 years, the interaction will be completely different.
Even within five years, it'll be very, very different. So don't get caught up on the details
of today or the crazy people who are saying it's going to move off in this direction or that direction.
The answer is nobody knows. And second, don't get too caught up on learning how to be an expert at
today unless you realize that tomorrow is going to require different skills. So look at the notion of
prompts and what's called prompt engineering. Everybody who's developing these say,
that's not the way we should interact. That yes, today we have to learn how to be good at
developing the prompts, but that's going to disappear or change dramatically because it's
not the best way of instructing. But as Sarah said,
Yeah, but as Sarah said, it's also like you hired this new intern who's really not,
who's smart, but doesn't know the field or something. And so you ask them to do a job
and they do it, but it wasn't at all what you expected. And so you have to,
well, prompts, if you will, change the instructions or give them guidance and so on.
So it's, you have to remember, well, first of all, I know this field quite well because
the basis for today's field was done in my laboratories. Actually, not by me, but my co-worker
and colleague, David Rumelhart. We did many papers together. David and some of our postdocs,
especially Jeff Fenton, helped develop the layers that are now true in the neural networks.
And Dave Rumelhart helped develop the back propagation algorithm that is used to set the
weights. And we already knew in those early days that these things can be very powerful,
but you can't understand what they're doing. And so we sort of thought it was built on the model
of the brain and it somehow could be useful for understanding how the brain works, but it's just
as difficult to understand because we understand how to build them. We understand the theory. We
understand exactly what we put into it, but it's this weight structure where the number of weights
can be in the billions. And that's what determines what it knows. And billion numbers,
you can't interpret it very easily. But the other important thing is, is a pattern recognizer.
It recognizes patterns and that's why it has to be trained on so much history, so much information,
but it doesn't have any intelligence. So it doesn't know what it's talking about.
And it has no morals, it has no ethics. And so it's very limited while also being very powerful.
And actually quite complex. I think that's a really good point, Don, because if you think
about that, it's actually extremely complimentary to what we as designers have been fine tuning
throughout our careers, which is empathy, which is more of a qualitative pattern recognition,
which is curiosity, right? And so it's actually, to me, a really complimentary tool to a lot of the
critical skills that we've always been applying. Curiosity, if you can call that a skill, but I
really believe it is. I think, Don, it's what has actually...
I try to train people into being curious and stopping and saying,
Oh, that's interesting. By the way, people you're with hate that when we're having a conversation and
I say, Oh, look at that. I've never seen that before. But by the way, the machines, the system today,
some people claim they have, they show empathy, but that's because they, it's following patterns. And
so when you give a sad story, it will say, Oh, I fully understand. I sympathize with what you're going
through. And let's see what we can do to do something. That's program.
That artificial empathy has value in and of itself. But, but it is not a replacement for human empathy.
And, and just to quickly close this kind of recommendation for our audience. So curiosity,
curation, and, and that really comes back to this like intern assistant mental model,
whatever it gives you, you still have to curate, you know, those to, to help you towards your goal.
It's not going to be a final output. And I think actually some of today's, so February, 2024's
strength of AI is really in the exploration and ideation stages and curation is key. And then
third context, I think the context of where you're using this, the context you're giving it,
there's so many different layers and dimensions to this idea of, of context and AI. But I think that
that is this context building and context recognition is going to be a really important
skill set for any design practitioner leveraging AI. There's even more, but let me comment that,
first of all, a lot of these technologies take over and can do a really excellent job of some things
and we should let them. So I'll give you an example from radiology because one of the things
they're really good at is looking at images and saying, oh, that looks like a tumor or this,
that or the other. And it's better than most radiologists today. And soon it will be better
than all radiologists. And so I've talked to my radiology friends and, um, who are really excellent
at doing this kind of diagnosis. And I say, what do you think about this is going to remove you from
that job. And their general answer for the, the best of them, I say, that's wonderful because
today I spent all of my time in a room looking at screens and trying to, to determine whether
that's a cancer or whether it's just a blotch or whatever. And now I'll let the machine do that.
And I can go back to being a doctor and going back and talking to the patients and really seeing the
patients and saying, look, here's what we see. Here's what we believe. And you know,
there are three different ways that we can approach this, but you're the one who has to make the
decision. So let me explain the different ways and what that means to you and what,
what the differences are. And they, they really look forward to moving their, their profession back
to what they used to like, which is I'm a human being interacting with you and trying to work with
you. And I think that's part of what you're saying, Sarah, that it's going to allow us to show
the human capacity. Because a lot of what we do is drudgery. We sit and we, we design and we do this
and we do that. And we're not any longer facing with the real problem. We're doing the details
of the solution. We'll let the system do the details. What I can do is I can, I can, it's
like asking my friend, I'm asking to do a task. And I know that there's somebody who I work with
who's better at this than me. And I asked him, him or her, I asked for advice and maybe they'll
give me a paper they've written, or maybe they'll talk to me for a while. But their answer isn't what I
need. Their answer is very helpful. But I then use that to craft a better response myself.
So first of all, I've seen this in designers who used to complain, I don't want to use this
system. I refuse to, I, you know, take a, I I'm good. I'm better than it can be. Programmers used
to say that when the first compilers came out in order. And guess what? It turns out that
they got rid of the drudgery and they can now think about the larger components of the problem they're
working on. There's one other thing I think it's very important to recognize though.
And that where we can take real advantage, you know, the way we interact with systems today.
You look at your washing machine, it has lots of buttons and knobs and controls,
or you look at a camera, which has more and more of the knobs and buttons and systems to control,
or our computers and so on. And we have menus and drop down this and you have commands you can issue.
That may go away. We may switch to conversational interaction, where we can say outcome oriented
design. Kate Moran and I are working on an article right now about this, that all of these nuances
to get to the end state are actually going to become superfluous or not even needed at all.
But there's a better way of putting it. Don't say they actually are going to become. How about this?
The design community should be the leaders in showing how we can change into using these
conversations as a way of replacing the complex, the complexity of today's screens and stuff.
So why don't have designers lead the way in actually doing that transformation?
You're right. And I think envisioning this world where that is the norm and it is better for
everyone. It's more inclusive. It's more accessible. It's more efficient. I think you're right. I think
that's a place that designers can play a very unique role in this changing landscape and evolution of AI.
Well, it's not just AI. It's evolution of the workforce or evolution of the way we think of the jobs.
Uh, AI is just one of the tools, but actually probably to make this work properly, we're going
to have to change some other things too.
Fair. You're right. Everything's going to change.
I think it's a really new opportunity to come out with entire new kinds of products and services.
In a service, again, you want to describe the goal that you have and let then
the company or the people we're talking to, or maybe the AI we're talking to figure out a way of
trying to get us. And we say, no, that isn't quite right. It's too much of this or not enough of that.
Or maybe it's too expensive.
You know what else is going to happen is not just this kind of, uh, gearing towards outcome
oriented or goal oriented design, but, uh, actually this, this dynamic design. So we actually are
only establishing the constraints as designers, the things that we absolutely know need to happen.
And then we let AI build an interface or a dynamic experience for that user that is contextually
specific to their preferences, to their needs, to what we've learned about them. And so we're not
creating the exact same user interface for every user. We're creating the constraints that we know
the system needs to abide by. And then, and then it dynamically changes for that end user based on
what it knows. And I think that that is such a big shift in the way that a lot of designers think
about what they do and what they produce. But what a, what a fun challenge, uh, that I think a lot of us
are going to be moving into as designers in this next decade.
You're repurposing it. What you're saying is don't say, Oh, all this new stuff, I got to learn it. Oh,
gosh, what am I going to do with it? It's going to take away my job. I got to learn too much new stuff.
Take it as wow. These are powerful things that I could use that we could use to make things that
even better for people. So, but if we can only change the way we use it, so, you know, why don't we
modify the tools and so that we can actually, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's an opportunity.
It's not a challenge. It's not a thing that you should worry about. You should learn about it.
But photography, when it was introduced, was a real challenge to the painters. Because what
painters did was they tried to pick pictures of people, pictures of the landscape, and they tried
to make it as realistic as possible. And, um, the camera just destroyed that. And people said,
oh, what's going to happen? And it was a real, it was a similar fight and argument. But what happened
instead was that painters just took the opportunity and said, okay, the cameras can capture this, that,
and the other, but I'm going to show you the real, the thoughts in your mind or what I really, how I
envisioned it. Or I'm going to say, you know, I've been watching people and this person, you can see
them from this angle, from that angle, and this angle, and they're doing that and this. And, you know,
you know, that's what Picasso did. He showed how you could show that same person simultaneously in
a painting and, uh, and change the world of art. And it became even more, even more accessible and
more exciting personally. And maybe that's exactly a good model for what's going to happen with AI.
Yeah.
But now you may change the topic.
It's, it's beautifully ironic in a way, because I can't tell you how many workshops I've facilitated
where I go in and I'm like, just forget everything we know today and think blue sky and think big.
And I find myself even in this, this new world, holding tight things that may not even have a place
or, or need to be held tightly. And, and I think that that skill set, practicing what we preach and,
and thinking and questioning everything. And I think that ties into this curiosity theme we've been
discussing is going to be pivotal and is, is going to, uh, be the make it or break it where we see
certain products and teams make leaps forward, uh, while other teams are holding too tight to what
they know today. Yep. Got to constantly be learning, changing.
Yeah. It's like you both have said, it's, it's about growing with it and, um, seeing what it can do.
And it does have a ton of opportunities. I wanted to switch things a little bit. You know,
we're talking about all these changes, um, all these things that are going to happen with AI,
but I want to turn things around and think about what's going to remain the same in some ways. What
are things we can't, that we can't forget about? Um, and that's, that's important. There are some
fundamentals to design and I wanted to hear what your thoughts on what's going to stay the same and
what we can't leave behind as these new tools, uh, continue to, to grow and, and change the way we,
we live. I mean, there are fundamentals to humanity is really what I think this,
this question becomes, right. And, uh, we've, we've dabbled around this concept of, of empathy,
artificial empathy and real human empathy. And I think to me, my kind of quick response to this is
the, the, the human part of our jobs and skill sets is not only going to stay the same,
but it's going to become even more important. I published an article with Jacob and Troon about
the anthropomorphism of AI tools. And I basically how people start to treat, especially generative AI
AI as a human and to have feelings and to be able to, um, even the kind of most severe degree
being companionship, rely on AI for these more traditional, uh, human centric behaviors and
feelings and relationships. And what was most interesting is, is of course the research and
article itself, but it's actually reading everyone's comments after reading the article and them sharing their
own sentiments of why, if they have the same behavior and potentially why they think they do.
And a lot of it came down to them, not wanting to lose those human behaviors. Uh, the more that they
deal with technology, they're scared that switching between working with humans and working with, uh,
AI that they're going to forget to still treat the humans that they're working with, with that same empathy.
And, and, and so I think that that's a really good anecdote of, of my belief of this human centered
side of our job or humanity centered side of our job is like, as Don likes to say is, is really what's
going to not change and actually become more important. I, I agree completely. And I think what
I hope we can do is start, stop focusing upon say the details of what the work that we're doing and
how much we do and accomplish, but focus on quality of life. And that's wasn't that people are need
and that designers are trained to do. And quality of life is what's really important. And, um, we have
to show how a company can improve your quality of life without losing any of the attributes to keep
the company successful. In fact, maybe enhancing them. But you know, when I use today's computers,
it's a pain. Let me tell you, it's a pain. First of all, uh, I have to reboot periodically to clean
out the crap that's in the memory systems. And second of all, they're always updating it, updating
it, updating it. And each update, uh, not only do I have to learn new things, but oftentimes I've
carefully set all sorts of settings on the tools I'm using. And a lot of them get, somehow they get
lost when they do the update. And, uh, I'm hoping that our, our new tools will allow a lot of this
to be done behind our backs. We don't see it, but rather it'll be a pleasure to go to see what,
what is the mail today? I'll summarize. Tell me what, which important ones should I answer?
Or is there something that I've neglected and I really want to get to right now? And that sort of
thing. And it's the conversation. And, uh, but once again, it's about quality of life.
I think what both of you are saying are really important. I think there are things that, you know,
we can't forget. Um, we can't leave behind. There are fundamental things we have as designers,
the skillset of empathy, but at the same time, we have to evolve with the technology as well
and, and grow with it. I liked your last comment. I just want to expand it.
It isn't that we have to grow with the technology. We also have to be some of the drivers to help
the technology change to a way that is better for people. I don't want us to just be responding
to what's coming. I want us to be one of the drivers for what is going to happen.
And I think we're the best position to do that because we're always thinking about humans.
And I think we are the best position to do that because we're always thinking about people
exactly, precisely. Exactly. Yeah. All right, Sarah and Dawn, I am going to throw
some quick questions your way. And really the aim is to just capture your immediate
off the cuff response. Oh my God, Dawn.
This is not meant to stress you out. Um, and just let me know what you think. So I have a few
questions. Let me know what you think. First response, first thought in your head. All right. First one.
Most important skill in a designer today.
Learning. Curiosity. And use the curiosity. Use the curiosity to guide your learning.
That's right. Yeah. They work, they work well together. Yeah, I agree.
One word to summarize your career.
A complete accident.
Unpredictable. I think the theme there is it's never linear.
Yeah. I've often thought about my career and made all sorts of plans and it's never,
ever turned out that way. What happens is some interesting opportunity comes that I never,
ever would have thought of. And I say, oh, okay. Boom. And I go.
Always keeping that door open, right? Always keeping the door open. And some of them failed,
but I learned a lot from the failure. In fact, you learn more from failures than from successes.
I totally agree. All right. Next one. Something you've recently become interested in.
Politics and economics.
The history of our national parks.
I'm really interested in public land. And as Don says, I think it's a really natural
of evolving or expansion of a designer's mind to start to wonder how the things we experience today
ended up being that way. And I become interested in the history of the world. So let me violate the
rules of these short answers or do a short answer. That's okay.
What is really important is moving out of the context of the particular skill of a designer to
try to understand the way the world has evolved in when it's all artificial, all these all done by
people and how we can change it. And, but understanding the history is critically important,
not because history repeats itself, it doesn't, but history determines the direction it's moving in
today. Absolutely. You know, that's, that's truly what designing for humanity is, right?
That's what designing for humanity is. Next one. The most important advice or feedback you've ever
received. I'll start. Not everyone is as not sensitive as you. I, it's really hard feedback and I am not a
super sensitive person and I sometimes deliver feedback assuming that person is kind of equal
to my sensitivity. And I think it's really hurt my interpersonal relationships. And this is
advice that I got 15, 16 years ago and it sticks with me all the time. My answer is when people tell me
I'm wrong and they tell me intelligently, because that's how I learn. And if I'm wrong, I really want
to know because I want to stop doing what I'm doing wrong and start doing it right. So it's when people
criticize, but as a helpful way of learning. Something you're still learning.
How to get along with people.
I tend to be a nerd. I tend to jump right to the basic issues of the thing, of the problem. I don't
do a nice introduction. Oh, how's your life today? Oh, I understand. Your dog is sick. How's it getting
better? I say, why do we do it this way? Why don't we do it that way? And, um, that doesn't go over
well. And I know that, and I've watched people who are really good at this and I've failed to be able
to learn it myself. And so I'm struggling with that. Uh, something I'm still learning is
to the depths of which I will never know everything within a specific area. Every time I think that I
like really have a grasp on something or that I have an opinion and I have a firm concept and I
have a point of view, it changes. And I think it's part of being curious and intelligent is being
willing to change a point of view, uh, when you have new data points. So that's something I'm still
learning. Yes. But I don't consider that a negative. I consider that a positive attribute. Thank you.
So this one is a fill in the blanks. Our field is horrible at remembering blank.
At remembering that this field exists in a complex system of other fields and other opinions,
other way of addressing issues. And that the designers are so focused upon the wonderful
craft skills that they have and their wonderful abilities that they, they don't work as good
partners with other people and other fields and other issues that could actually improve what they're doing.
Our field is horrible at remembering that we're relatively young compared to a lot of different
industries and practices that, uh, we are heavily evolving. We're teaching or exposing others to this
concept and idea. And that a lot of people practicing design weren't formally trained in it. So we're
young. And I think we oftentimes forget that.
And the best people in design are those who were not formally trained. That will be controversial,
but I'd say no, I think because you need to know a broader view of things. And so what happens when
you're in one field and you switch to the other field, the stuff you've learned in the first field
turns out to be wonderfully applied to the new field. And so we want to get more people with more
general backgrounds.
Yeah, I completely agree with both of you there.
I feel like there's this common, uh, problem where people, everyone thinks that their job is the
most important, you know, I think everyone, everyone experiences that. Right. Um, but you're,
you're both, you're both absolutely right.
Right. So let me go. I got it. Sorry. I got to say.
Oh no, that's all good.
Everybody thinks their job is the most important. And I think that's important that they think that,
because why would you be doing it if you didn't think it was important, but it isn't.
All the jobs are important and it's the combination that's, that's absolutely necessary.
I happen to be opposed to STEM instruction. Now I happen to be well-educated. I have two degrees
in engineering, right? And so, uh, science and technology and engineering and mathematics.
The problem is that those are separate disciplines. They're, they're psych,
there are silos and that's not good. And second, well, people say we want to have steam,
which is to add the arts. Well, we want to add the humanities. You want to add about history.
You want to add about, you know, if you were a field that works understanding people. So we need
to understand people best. Now, where do we get the understanding from? We don't get it from
psychologists. Psychologists have their narrow cycles. I have a PhD in psychology. What am I
an expert in and how the year works? Come on. That's not how people work. And second of all,
not from sociology or anthropology or political science, go to a novelist. Study how novelists
write novels because they have to talk about people in a way that when you read the novel, you say, oh,
yeah, I know people like that. I love that person. I hate that person, et cetera. So we have to actually
expand to know something about everything. Not, not, you can't really know about everything,
but you have to expand your knowledge. And that's where the curiosity and continual learning comes in.
Think about it. We need to think about it more holistically. I have one last one, and I think
it's a good one to end on. The greatest strength of our field is blank.
Or emphasis upon people.
I would say the diversity of it. I really like that everyone comes from a different background.
Everyone's studied something different. There are practitioners across the world with
different life experiences. And I think that that makes it an incredible industry to learn
from peers and then also stronger because of it.
Overall theme of people, diverse people, humanity.
Well, humanity includes more than people. Humanity includes all living things and the ecological
system because that all affects us. Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
So human-centered design is called HCD. I call humanity-centered design H plus CD because it's
built upon the fundamentals of human-centered but expanded even more.
That was Dawn Norman and Sarah Gibbons. Check out the show notes for links to anything we've
referenced so far. But also remember that we have thousands of articles, videos, and reports on our
website about UX design, research, strategy, and even UX careers. That website is www.nngroup.com.
And if you enjoyed this show in particular, please follow or subscribe on your podcast platform of
choice. This show is hosted and produced by me, Samita Tenkala. All video editing and post-production is by
the Larimore Production Company. That's it for today's show. Until next time, remember, keep it simple.
Thank you.