As companies grow and develop, their business needs change. Their target audience may change as well. Successful web design has always been about anticipating how a customer will interact with a website and designing it with that interaction in mind. The future of UX design is in design automation, UX design for Augmented Reality, and the changing role of a UX designer.
Design Automation
Automation is infiltrating every industry. From automobiles to healthcare, machines are learning to map roads and diagnose an illness without interacting with a human. If automation is so prolific, can we anticipate its invasion into the UX space?
Can creative processes be automated? Can we automate the user experience? And should we?
Automation is not going to replace designers. We simply see it as removing a barrier in the creative process. If a machine can follow an algorithm to outline a website, UX will move away from the tedious and repetitive process of wireframing. The architecture of websites will design themselves, organizing and evolving based on the business’s goals. The web design process will be faster, but UX designers will not be obsolete. They will be able to focus on the things AI cannot do—integrate enjoyment, emotion, and empathy into the user experiences we are creating.
As Forbes puts it, “Andy Warhol used silk-screen printing and an army of helpers … yet his ‘assembly line practices’ do not detract from his artistic worth.”
UX Design for Augmented Reality
The success of AR relies heavily on designers because AR is an immersive medium. It cannot be fragmented or frustrating. This is where we will really see UX designers closing the gap between the screen and the experience, changing how we interact with products.
As the ways we interact with technology change, it will be more important than ever for UX designers to anticipate future adaptations in human behavior.
The Changing Role of UX Designers
We will see UX designers specializing in voice interfaces and augmented reality. Designers will also become more involved in business development, stretching their creative side and continuing to influence the customer conversion process. A strategic-minded UX designer gives companies a competitive advantage.
Across all industries, people worry that automation will replace their role. Machine learning is amazing, but it cannot replace the pieces of UX that are inherently human.
