🪄Episode 6: Patterns in AI

Welcome back to AI Goodies! 🙋‍♀️

Fun fact: the idea of launching a newsletter about AI x Design came to me as I was fantasising precisely about the issue of Patterns in AI 💡 so this is a super exciting moment for me. 👏

So, what could possibly be so exciting about patterns? Well, for once, we’re naturally designed to be pattern-seeking creatures: our brains are wired to try to make sense of the world around us by spotting and understanding patterns.

Interfaces make no exception. We learn how to use technology by understanding the patterns. We form expectations and mental models by relating to existing patterns and looking to repeat them.

This is why I find the opportunity to define patterns for AI experiences and surfaces incredibly important and exciting: the patterns we design today are designing the interfaces of the future - and even our minds to some extent.

So, let’s see what are the most interesting research and documentation efforts that are being done in the space (and these are true innovators, scholars and cartographers - I have the utmost respect for them).

The effort of disambiguating an infant design space is not an easy feat.

📚 Key Libraries

✈️ I’ve recently attended an amazing design conference in Berlin (big love for Hatch Conference) to record a live episode of my podcast Honest UX Talks.

Here’s proof (and testament to my odd postures when someone’s taking a pic; this time it was Hang)

This sounds fun, and great, but what does it have to do with patterns? Well, in this group photo, portrayed in the middle, is Emily Campell, the curator and author of The Shape of AI project, which is one of the most important resources in the AI space today. If you want to start learning about patterns, principles and problems in AI x Design, start here.

I was very inspired by my dinner conversation with her and I’m happy to see the incredible thought leadership work that’s being done in the AI space.

Then, our conversation reminded me of another very interesting resource uncovering and documenting patterns in the AI space.

Lastly, Teardowns.ai is an amazing library assembled by my friend Tommy Geoco at UX Tools, in which he “tears down” the user-journeys of AI-based tools with an interactive video & step-by-step links. You can use this tool to learn how other AI-based tools guide their users through their interfaces.

🪄Magically enough, I might have invented a pattern in my work at Miro. 😱 To make the story even more mind-blowing, it was Jakob Nielsen himself to pointed that out to me.

You can read more about my work at Miro in this LinkedIn post and since I made a promise to the Father of UX himself, I will follow up with an article unpacking the rationale and work behind the AI Shortcuts (Accelerators Pattern).

💻 Patterns & Principles

I like to think of patterns as dynamic building blocks that construct an experience. But for them to come together in a coherent, meaningful way, we need to define the principles by which they’ll operate.

Big tech players go beyond identifying patterns and strive to articulate the relevant principles that we need to design and build in the AI space. Here are some of the most notable spaces documenting their philosophy and work. 👇

Google goes beyond a pattern library and makes available an entire guidebook (including case studies!) that serves as a toolkit when making design decisions for AI surfaces and interactions. Their pattern library can also be explored at the link below.

At a more holistic level, they also communicate a set of principles for promoting and reinforcing ethical and safety responsibilities (and I remember one of my favourite ideas: AI safety is philosophy with a deadline 😬)

Similarly, Microsoft developed a whole staged-process guidelines on what are the best practices to use when designing for AI, depending on where the user is at in the user-product interaction, and it’s an important visual artefact to reference when having conversations and making decisions for AI interactions.

See all of them documented at the link below, also make sure to explore their library of guidelines and patterns over here.

Another resource worth exploring is IBM’s space for Designing with AI.

🧠 (applying) Patterns & Principles w. Critical Thinking

As designers, we have the power to decide which pattern goes where, and what principles we employ to bring AI-powered interactions to life. To do so, we need critical thinking to understand how our AI surfaces make users feel, behave, and think. While we’ll dive deeper into how to tackle this in our next newsletter episode, I do want to share a relevant resource in the meantime - UX for AI 👋

💛 Canvas ‘24 by Miro: Are you ready?

I was supposed to go to New York on October 8th to attend Canvas 24’ but I had to turn down the invitation due to personal reasons. 💔 I’ll be attending online and I hope to see as many of you joining me for this super cool line-up of speakers and topics 🙏 

🙋‍♀️ Register for free at the link below 👇

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💜 Next on AI Goodies: Episode 7 - Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

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AI & Design Love, Ioana ♥️