5 Ways Companies Improve UX with AI

Key takeaways

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been bringing massive transformations in various industries in recent years.
• For example, it can change the brand’s logo or the content that goes on the website.
• AI is also helping UX professionals develop better user-friendly designs for websites and applications.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been bringing massive transformations in various industries in recent years. We see AI impacting different parts of life and making possible things that were once fantasy.

Although there is a fear that AI will take away our jobs, it is not so. On the other hand, AI will help us progress in different sectors. According to Forbes, by 2022, AI will create 58 million jobs.

So, we should try to welcome these changes and make life easier. Another sector where Artificial Intelligence is bringing revolution is the UX (User experience). In this article, you will get an idea of how AI helps in improving UX for businesses.

What is UX, and Why is it Important? #

User Experience (UX) is how one user feels when he or she interacts with any system. It can be a website, mobile application, device or software.

Most businesses are shifting their focus to creating a better customer experience. Almost all successful companies are known for an exceptional understanding of the audience’s interests and needs. To satisfy customer requirements, it is essential to have an understanding of their likes and dislikes.

Therefore, companies try to collect data on customer requirements and experience to create the right products and services. The product or service must make a good first impression. According to Forester Research, a good UX design on a website can boost conversion up to 400 percent.

So, most companies are also going for a proper UX design for their websites and services. UX is important because it helps create a positive experience for potential customers. When they have a positive experience, they remain loyal to the brand for many years. All these years, this job fell in the hand of the marketing research teams.

However, in recent years, many companies have been bringing in AI and machine learning technologies to create a better user experience for their customers.

How AI Improves UX? #

If you study the goals of AI and UX closely, you’ll find that they are similar. They are designed to study human behavior and interpret it. With the interpretation, they find out what is the next thing the customer might do.

In this way, predictive analysis is done, which is utilized by companies to map out their plans properly. But how exactly can AI help UX? Let’s take a look at a few ways.

Intelligent Algorithms #

AI works on algorithms. With the help of these algorithms, AI can collect information about website visitors or application users. Then it uses these data to optimize the system for future use. It keeps on learning and adjusting the data about the user experience. The ultimate goal is to provide users a personalized and engaging experience.

Deep Learning #

AI uses a process that we know as deep learning. With this mechanism, it can analyze thousands of different variations and generate alternatives. This information can be used in UX for adding buttons or graphics on a website or an app.

For example, with AI, we learn at what places a user clicks the most on a website. We can enhance those areas with striking graphics or a button. As most users are clicking on certain regions, AI can understand others will do the same.

With this information, UX can be enhanced by changing the website’s design by adding a few things here and there. Deep learning technologies help us get behavioral data which helps AI to improve the UX of any system.

Hotjar is a popular AI tool that helps you learn where exactly people are clicking on the website. In this way, one can easily find the spots to enhance.

Original diagram for Techfastly by Vin Patel.

Testing using AI #

UX professionals need to study various metrics to improve the whole user experience of any product or service. AI can help with this! It has the right tools that help in evaluating and track the UX metrics, such as:

• Location of users
• Bounce rates
• User Flow
• Categories or Product reviews
• Session times
• Pages view
• and more.

With the help of these metrics, the UX professional will understand how they can improve the user experience. Google Analytic is one such product that uses AI to provide these insights into a website.

For example, a UX professional learns that most website visitors are clicking on an image of a product. So, it would be better to enhance that picture or bring it to the front page. In this way, the users don’t have to go through the pages to get the product.

No Biases in Testing #

When you use AI for UX, there are no chances of any biases. AI only shows the reality of what users want or do with the product or service. So, there is no need for A/B testing or split testing.

In A/B testing, personal reasoning can impact the result. Say there is an A/B test with a result showing that sample A has received more attention. However, the professional may still want to go for B as they may think that users will like it more.

A/B testing is not transparent. The professional is unable to see what are the reasons a person chose a particular sample. However, when you use AI for such metric testing, there are no biases.

AI will show only the reality. It will give data on what people like and also show information about why they do so. As AI relies on hard data, you will likely get a clear picture of what the users want.

In this way, UX professionals will deal with unbiased data when working with AI.

Ways Companies can improve UX with AI: #

AI can help UX professionals to understand the importance of unbiased user data. This user data is the key to creating a positive experience for the customers.

Here are the five ways AI can help improve UX:

1. Emotion AI #

Do you know AI can detect emotions as well? The mechanism is called Emotion AI or affective computing. Gadgets with emotional intelligence can understand the emotional channels of communication as well.

It helps the AI learn and interpret verbal and non-verbal human communication. For example, when a person smiles, the AI can tell whether it’s a happy or sad smile.

Original diagram for Techfastly by Vin Patel.

This technology includes:

• Machine learning algorithm
• Facial recognition algorithm
• Data analysis

UX professionals can learn about the emotional responses to a company’s products, content, website or services with emotion AI. The technology can be easily used on the footage of CCTV recordings in stores to understand people’s emotions while looking at different products of a particular brand.

If the businesses learn the people’s reactions to their brand elements, they can take the UX professionals’ help to make necessary changes. For example, it can change the brand’s logo or the content that goes on the website.

With enhanced content on the website, the company can expect better engagement. In this way, emotional AI can help optimize different elements of a company.

One good example of emotion AI in action is Affectiva’s emotional car software. It can detect when a driver is angry or unfocused while driving. The AI installed in the system will then take control of the car and prevent any accidents.

2. Complex Data Analysis #

Even these days, UX professionals depend on heat maps and A/B testing to learn all about user engagement. However, AI can easily provide more in-depth information regarding the user experience.

UX teams can use AI deep learning mechanisms to analyze and track huge data sets. AI guarantees accurate behavioral data, which is not possible through traditional methods. Many businesses are making use of behavioral data in their UX processes.

For example, Joseph Turner, a shirt retailer, took the help of Segmentify’s AI solutions to expand their business. With AI support, they could easily understand what users liked and disliked. They made 2.6 times higher conversions with the help of AI solutions.

With the AI-produced data, they could analyze which places to optimize on their website. And this resulted in 20% more items in the basket.

3. Personalized Advertising #

Although people think UX professionals only have to deal with the website or the landing page. However, the truth is these professionals start working from the first moment a product or a service is introduced to the public.

The struggle to get better engagement starts from the first introduction, which is from advertising. Advertising helps grab the attention of users online to a certain product. When intense competition exists in the market, it is essential to make better ads.

Now a person has thousands of brands to choose from. The trick is to become a superstar in front of that person so he or she goes for your product. Moreover, with only an eight-second attention span to impress, the job is more difficult than before.

AI can help UX designers come up with more personalized and creative ads for customers. As most of the leads are now available online, social media ads are more common.

Original diagram for Techfastly by Vin Patel.

AI produces more in-depth data on the users when they interact with the brand’s social media pages. So, every time a user likes a page, comments on posts or displays any interest in any product, the AI will collect the data.

Then it will interpret the data to segregate the audiences into distinct groups with certain attributes. The UX designer can then look at this information to design the ads accordingly.

For example, the AI data shows that most of the users showing interest in the brand and its other product ads are between the ages of 16-20. So, when the next ad is planned, it should be optimized for this age group. In this way, the ad will gain better attention from this age group.

4. Chatbots #

Chatbots are the most popular ways in which AI can improve the user experience of the brand. These are virtual assistants who talk to the user when there is no real customer support.

Using natural language processing, chatbots can speak just like human beings. In this way, they help businesses double their customer service metrics.

According to Capgemini, 75% of the businesses that have used chatbots have reported a 10% increase in customer satisfaction.

Moreover, chatbots can work 24/7, unlike their human counterpart. So, it can also handle unruly customers who take out their frustration on customer care service professionals. However, if you fear chatbots will take over customer care professionals’ jobs, you are wrong.

No matter what, during any conversation with the bot, the human professional will have to take over. It helps in maintaining the human touch the users want from any company. Therefore, in the sector of customer service as well, AI can help UX professionals very well.

5. Automation #

UX testing can use automation during the research process to make work faster. AI automation can detect the problems that users experience during interacting with any product, service or website.

With the correct automation tool, the company can reach out to the user who has a problem with anything related to the company. The AI collects the data and presents it to the company. In this way, the UX professional can use the data to prepare a better system for future users.

Automation in UX testing can help in resource-saving, cost-reducing, performance testing and more.

Amazon is one of the best examples of using automation in UX. It has gained a 35% increase in its revenue with the help of personalized recommendations. You must have come across these recommendations when using the Amazon shopping website.

Original diagram for Techfastly by Vin Patel.

The AI here records all the data about you, including your past buys, age and location, to provide personalized product recommendations.

Conclusion #

Artificial Intelligence is still evolving. Now it has limited assistance for UX professionals. Although, whatever assistance AI provides is helping businesses grow rampantly.

Almost all the top business giants are using AI’s help to get their things going. It helps in saving money and also makes the work more efficient. However, no company can grow without giving a better user experience. So, recently most companies have been using AI to enhance customer experience.

From chatbots to personalized recommendations, we see a lot in all the UX elements. AI is also helping UX professionals develop better user-friendly designs for websites and applications.

Related reading

• 5 Different Ways Advertising Helps Your Business
• Ways AI Can Be Used in Marketing
• 'PeopleLens', Microsoft's Newest AI Technology, is Helping Blind People See

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Questions and answers

What is UX, and Why is it Important? #

User Experience (UX) is how one user feels when he or she interacts with any system. It can be a website, mobile application, device or software.

How AI Improves UX? #

If you study the goals of AI and UX closely, you’ll find that they are similar. They are designed to study human behavior and interpret it.