Hello {User_Name} — Let’s Talk About UX Personalisation
Gone are the days of relying on recommendation engines to customise UX. This is personalisation 2.0, courtesy of Salesforce
I’m just as passionate about automation as I am about user experience (UX) design, in much the same way as most mothers and teachers care for their children and pupils equally. But the tricky thing about automation and UX design (or design of any kind, for that matter) is that they don’t always get along so well — not unlike siblings or peers. That, sadly, can make for the thorniest of problems.
As with kids, both automation and UX design are extraordinary in their own ways, while both also have their distinct flaws. Each, when left in peace to go about their very different business, goes about that business just fine. Often though, when the two are thrust together, personalities and goals clash wildly. Never the twain shall meet, as they say of things too dissimilar to exist in harmony alongside one another. So, the best recourse can be designation to opposite ends of the house or classroom — well, in this context, opposite ends of the business world.
That said, in the right circumstances, this seemingly chalk-and-cheese pair — one scientific, the other creative — will fare well together. Time and time again, we’ve seen productive collaborations between experts in both fields lead to unexpectedly remarkable outcomes. One recent success story comes from within the walls of American Customer Relationship Management (CRM) firm Salesforce.
Salesforce — whose clients include T-Mobile and Schneider Electric — aim to “bring companies and customers together” using an integrated CRM platform. That platform gives all departments within any company a single, shared view of every customer.
However, Salesforce recognises that each of these customers is entirely different, which is why they’re exploring the rarely visited intersection between artificial intelligence (AI) and UX design. Having decided the twain shall meet, after all, the firm believes the latter can revolutionise the former. And exactly how do they plan to make this happen?
Well, Salesforce are tapping into the potential of AI, using a new platform called “Einstein Designer.” This is powered by a tool developed by their own UX Research & Development team, whose initial vision statement was to:
“Radically improve the way to create user interfaces by applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.”
The platform learns all components of a brand’s design system before producing different designs for different users without straying outside of that design system. This gives their clients’ customers individualised digital experiences, building stronger relationships between client and customer into the bargain.
This might sound a lot like the AI-generated personalisation we see all the time on sites like Amazon, Youtube and Netflix, but it’s not quite the same. Such services lean on sophisticated recommendation engines to deliver customised user experiences. Amazon, for instance, makes around 35% of its revenue from sales based on recommendations, while such recommendations account for approximately 70% of the content viewed by Netflix subscribers.
Even though Salesforce’s clients may also use recommendation engines in the same way and for the same reasons, Einstein Designer takes things a step further. Say you and I are both browsing Netflix at the same time: we’ll certainly see different title and genre selections, and they’ll appear in a different order too.
As I often do, I’ll likely plump for some chilling post-apocalyptic sci-fi effort like I Am Mother, whereas you might grab a 90s tearjerker like Stepmom. But the user interface (UI) we used to make those contrasting (and heavily influenced) choices will be just the same.
Yet, if we both make our way to the same holiday accommodation site produced using Einstein Designer, and we’re both looking for a trip to India at the same time, the UI we’ll be met with will match in terms of the brand’s design system (colour palette, typefaces, and so on), but we’ll see different characteristics of the hotels on offer before others.
Perhaps you — concerned about working off the Biryani — will see the facilities of a hotel first, while I — worried about being too far from my favourite Galub Jamun — will see a hotel’s location first. This is incredibly smart and pulls both UX and UI design into the future. It also calls to mind a brilliant saying I heard over and over on a trip to the subcontinent a few years ago: same same but different.
UX has been around for quite some time now, and although it has taken a month of Sundays for many organisations to understand and appreciate the benefits of providing relevant and meaningful digital experiences to users, very few remain in the Dark Ages. Any stragglers will no doubt be forced to yank up their socks in 2021 when Google starts to factor a website’s UX into its search results.
Just when I’m elated thinking UX is at the top of its game, along comes a trailblazer like Salesforce and flips the game on its head. I’m always in awe of any innovator redefining and furthering a field in which I’ve had a foot, in one way or another, for over two decades. And to do that using AI technologies, traditionally considered inconsistent with the imagination and artistry required in design, even better!
By automating some parts of the process, UX designers — and the various other professionals they work alongside — can craft customised digital experiences in a fraction of the time it would take manually. Like all automation, this has the invaluable effect of freeing up humans, allowing them to focus on tasks that machines don’t have the skills to undertake well.
I’m sure plenty of UX designers out there will agree with me. I think personalisation like this will become the norm rather than a choice, in much the same way as providing an outstanding user experience has become an essential part of business today.
I’d love to hear your thoughts {First_Name}, so please leave them in the comments section below.
