UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
December//15//2023
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Why We Don’t Leave Internet Platforms We Dislike. Really enjoyful and very pertinent article from Callum Booth for The Next Web on the topic of why users persist using certain platforms on the web, even with them being surrounded with issues and controversies. The author highlights some examples and speaks with a few experts who provide their perspectives on why these ebbs and flows of utilization persist. And one of those examples is Apple, and how they’ve made simplification of tasks one of their main charters (and the impact that it has on people’s habits and lives). Well worth reading through and reflecting upon. Highlight of the article includes:
“The problem is, Sprinz explains, that huge tech companies are “too big to fail” when the platforms trying to compete with them do a similar thing with a near identical business model. What this means is a service attempting to be another version of Twitter or Bandcamp won’t succeed. It needs to look beyond being a copycat. But there’s hope: “Technology is today’s agent of creative destruction,” Sprinz says. Smaller companies can challenge huge business, but they need to be doing something noticeably different in order to take away market share, whether that’s offering a new user experience or utilising the latest technological advancements.”
2.
AI and Contact Centers. Another week, another article on the topic of AI (I suspect this trend will continue for a while). This brief article comes from the Qualtrics blog and author Harry Gough, focused on the impact AI can have on Contact Centers. There’s aspects the author focuses on tied with automation of certain tasks, and even leveraging speech to text (NLP technology), for capturing notes for instance. The author highlights aspects such as taking time off from agents schedule by automating certain tasks, fixing bad experiences at a scale, and leveraging chatbots, to name just a few. It’s a colorful case study observation of how AI can make a difference for a particular type of function/engagement. Worth reading through. Highlight of the article includes:
“We’ll give you an example, post-call notes. Your agents don’t want to do them; they don’t have time to do them. And now, with generative call summaries, they don’t have to. Artificial intelligence can listen to every call and automatically provide an unbiased, comprehensive post-call recap of what was covered including nuance, sentiment, next steps, and more. While technology wraps up the manual admin from the previous call in the background, agents can immediately move on to helping their next customer. The result? Call times get shorter and your agents can spend their time on priority issues.”
3.
The Power of a Research Strategy. Great article from the dScout blog, documenting an interview with Chris Geison, researcher at Service Now (previously at Workday and Airtable). It’s a very insightful interview where Mr. Geison volunteers information on his career path, but also on how Research can take on a strategic focus, and what that actually means within the context of a large organization. He also discusses what democratization of Research entails and how that percolates across different parts of an organization. Very pertinent and worth reading through. Highlight of the article includes:
“There is certainly an opportunity for research strategy to happen at the executive level, but calling it leadership can leave out consultants and managers who often don’t see themselves influencing those conversations about org structure, democratization, etc. It also leaves out individual contributors who have an opportunity to bring all the various things they could be working on to their managers. It opens the space for questions like, “Here are all the different things I could be working on, but here’s why I think I should work on this.” Moving toward conversations about what best leverages expertise instead of what’s most urgent.”
