How Artificial Intelligence Can Be Used To Design Better Mobile User Experience

Artificial Intelligence, known by its well-known alias AI, has been around for a long time now- from the 1950s but began garnering attention in the 1990s with the release of movies depicting this concept. From ‘The Matrix’ to ‘Blade Runner,’ be it Skynet in ‘Terminator 2- Judgement day’ or Jarvis from ‘Iron Man,’ these films gave us an insight into the capabilities of an intelligent machine. AI is no longer a mere science fiction concept, and it bears an infinite potential which, when rightly tapped into, can do wonders. But how can it enrich mobile user experience (UX)? Before diving into the details that answer this question, let us take a brief look at what Artificial Intelligence is, the evolution of AI and its current market value, and the popular AIs that make a smartphone ‘smart.’ 

Artificial Intelligence 

Artificial Intelligence (AI), in plain words, is the ability of a machine to think, learn and apply the knowledge gained to make decisions and carry out tasks on behalf of humans to make life easy. Here’s a simple example of Artificial Intelligence: if you want to set the alarm for an hour from now, all you need to do is speak to the AI on your phone, and it would set the alarm for you, instead of you going through the process of manually setting it. Via TechiePlus you can learn more about it.

Evolution of AI: Science Fiction To Reality

A few decades ago, Artificial Intelligence was nothing more than an idea right out of a sci-fi movie – astonishing, advanced, surreal. Fast-forward to a few years later from then, you had big companies like Apple, Google, etc., investing in this concept, bringing it to life. And now, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech giants are funding projects to tap into the potential this technology possesses. They believe that the AI built so far is “narrow” and that it is capable of much more than is already known. The late, legendary physicist Stephen Hawking believed that AI could be the most exceptional event in the history of our civilization. Powerful, isn’t it? 

Trendsetter AIs: How They Enhance Mobile UX

However, why is the focus on ‘mobile’ UX, and what role does AI have to play in it? According to Statista, there are 4.18 billion mobile Internet users globally, and these figures are only rising by the day. With more than half the world using smartphones to access sites over the Internet, the necessity for having state-of-the-art mobile UX design has grown multifold because you would rather have a phone that is smart and can simplify tasks for you. To avoid a bland mobile user interaction or user experience, instead of an engaging experience, AIs called virtual assistants, or smart assistants came into existence, and those that exist today are ruling the world, figuratively speaking. Here are some of the trending AIs: 

1. Siri – Siri is Apple’s brainchild that played a vital role in making the iPhone what it is today
2. Google Assistant – Google assistant is to Android what Siri is to iOS, and it is currently the leading virtual assistant 
3. Alexa – Amazon’s equivalent Alexa is widely prevalent on devices such as the Amazon Echo, Fire TV but the latest app released makes it accessible on all android smartphones
4. Cortana – Microsoft introduced their own AI system in their desktops and phones operating on Windows 10
5. Bixby – Bixby is another smart assistant that is exclusive to Samsung’s smartphones and TVs only

How To Design An Enriched Mobile UX Using AI

A good user experience constitutes the following :

• Simplicity of design 
• Visually appealing
• Speed
• Content clarity(text, images, videos, etc) 
• Ease of use
• Simplifying tasks with minimum user input

By incorporating AI into designing mobile user experience in the following ways, you can achieve not only excellent but great UX:

• Supporting voice commands to run tasks and enhanced searches as having an AI that can execute jobs for you is most enjoyable if you can talk to it and not requiring to use your hands much
• Personalization using AI to make your device feel specially designed for you, predicting your needs based on all the user data collected – where it records your routine from your sleep pattern to the number of steps you’ve walked or tracks your purchase history and searches made, ideally connecting with you and understanding you better than anybody else. 
• Integrating with IoT which allows you to control your home appliances like your fans, lights and so on bypassing instructions to your AI such as turning off the lights and fans when you leave the room or adjusting your AC to your body temperature 
• Realtime translation where your Al can perform the interpretation of texts and content for you without requiring external apps or even the Internet 
• Security features that let you unlock your mobile phone and your apps via your fingerprint or, even better, using the face lock that’s empowered by AI
• Quick access that requires you to feed inputs into your mobile device to assist the AI in carrying out an activity, for example, with just a tap or two your photos are segregated and organized into folders based on people (facial recognition) 

In a few years, Artificial Intelligence is going to transfigure mobile user experience remarkably if not revolutionize the way we interact with our mobile phones, thus making our smartphones smarter.