User Interface Design Is Dying
Imagine winning a Jackpot or inheriting a lot of money. Now you’re finally able to organize your life the way you always wanted. Part of…
Imagine winning a Jackpot or inheriting a lot of money. Now you’re finally able to organize your life the way you always wanted. Part of that new lifestyle could be hiring some staff to help around the house. We’re all sick and tired of doing endless chores. What could be nicer than not having to worry about those pesky chores ever again?
Once you hire your staff, all you have to do is make them aware of your wishes. You can then kick back and enjoy the fabulous lifestyle of the rich who enjoy every comfort money can buy.
Interaction with Your Staff
It goes without saying that having huge staff on payroll forces you to interact with them. But the question is: do you need to design that interaction? Just make sure to make an effort to hire capable, skilled staff. You then won’t have to work too hard to make them understand and follow your orders. You should be able to have simple, straightforward interactions with them. You would just let them know your preferences. Then, you let them do their jobs with least supervision.
You should not feel the need to design the interaction between yourself and your staff. A plain, colloquial mode of communication and interaction should suffice in all situations. And if anything does not go the way you like it, you can always either try and retrain the staff, or replace them.
Reality Check
Let’s get real for a moment: you ain’t gonna win a Jackpot, nor are you going to inherit enormous wealth. So why are we then even mentioning the above scenarios?
The thing is, we are going to witness increasing number of sophisticated software agents enter the marketplace. Those agents will most likely come with some kind of built in artificial intelligence. When we start interacting with such agents, we will be in the position to pick and choose our own staff. That’s something only rich people can afford to do today.
We will soon witness the unstoppable commoditization of the automated services. Thanks to the economies of scale we’ll soon get to the point where we will be able to hire an army of affordable agents. We will then let them work on annoying chores, freeing us to deal with more fulfilling tasks. We’re approaching the age of technological progress. There will be no need for us to be wealthy to be able to enjoy the convenience of having staff working full time for us.
User Interface Issues
This possibility of hiring automated agents who will act as our staff isn’t new. An average person today has a smart phone with approximately 35 apps installed. Plus we have access to hundreds of thousands of specialized apps.
So why are we now talking about those newfangled text-based agents as if it’s breaking news? It’s because the new generation of automated online services offer competitive advantages. The most important one is the absence of graphical user interface (GUI).
Why would we claim that the absence of user interface is a major competitive advantage? The main concern of any user interface is what we might call a ‘scar tissue’. This ‘scar tissue’ occurs any time humans interact with software. No matter how we look at it, any app struggles with the issues related to the way users are interacting with it. Humans tend to find it frustrating to interact with their smart phones. This frustration is not only reserved for smart phone interactions. Users find it frustrating to interact with their desktop apps as well as with web apps in the browser.
We now have disciplines such as User Interaction, User Experience, Usability, etc. Those disciplines attempt to resolve issues that arise when human consumer is using software. Contrary to the expectations, those practices are getting more and more complex. This growing complexity is adding huge costs to software projects.
Avoiding User Interfaces is Desirable
Any time we want to build a new service/app, we must focus a lot of effort on designing the user interface. To make things even worse, such gargantuan efforts are almost always going to waste. Majority of users remain mystified and frustrated with the experience of using our products. So it’s high time we look for a way out of this game that only brings us diminishing returns.
When using the human workforce we don’t have to worry about designing the interface. We’ve seen how simple, colloquial interaction always suffices. Yes, but what about interacting with artificial intelligence workforce? Speaking to machines, or sending them text messages seems to get things done. Knowing that, it will become clear how straightforward it is to interact with chat bots.
Intrigued? Want to learn more about the bot revolution? Read more detailed explanations here:
The Age of Self-Serve is Coming to an End
Only No Ux Is Good UX
Stop Building Lame Bots!
Four Types Of Bots
Is There A Downside To Conversational Interfaces?
Are Bots just a Fad? Are GUIs really Superior?
How to Design a Bot Protocol
Breaking The Fourth Wall In Software
Bots Are The Anti-Apps
How Much NLP Do Bots Need?
Screens Are For Consumption, Not For Interaction