Thinking about Generative AI UX Design Patterns

Textile 2024 week 23 note

There are lots of questions about how AI will impact “knowledge” work moving forward as we all huddle in front of our machines for terminal velocity to be achieved to see if things calm down. One thing is for sure though in the meanwhile, we should think about how to use this stuff. There are no shortage of screeds of enthusiasm and self flagellating doomsaying, but one thing you don’t see often are patterns.

Design patterns are quite simply codified recommendations of use. You should design or build software this way or that. The interesting thing here is establishing how AI fits in terms of scope. The current approach we’ve seen thus far is that you type something into a box and AI does everything. This article examines it from a different and more nuanced standpoint, one that the staid and solid enterprise types like Microsoft have already known, which is you need to be clever where you slot it in and how much. You need to think which nail the hammer is going to pound down, rather than demolish a bed of nails with a ton of concrete. The author also takes this slightly further in exploring the notions of this fit being alongside or separate, layered or integrated. Perhaps most interesting as paragraph upon paragraph is written or perhaps even generated about provenance of produced words, images and sounds is the notion of awareness and action.

All in all, it’s a good, middle of the road piece of thinking about AI in the tools that people like us at Textile are building.