The most valuable contribution product designers can make to software is making the core value of a product clear to the people using it. Yet over and over again... this seemingly simple objective doesn’t get met. Why? Making the value of a product clear through use (esp. first t … | Continue reading
As the ability for computers to interpret and generate text, images, and video keeps accelerating, it's increasingly clear that multi-modal personal assistants are in our future. But the only way to find out what form they'll take is continued exploration. With that in mind, here … | Continue reading
Portfolio presentations are an opportunity for designers to showcase their design process and problem-solving skills to potential employers, peer groups, and more. Over the years, there's been a clear trend in the portfolio presentations I see: much more focus on doing "work" vs. … | Continue reading
If you get the call when both your parents and children need help with their computers, you're part of Generation IT (thanks Sam). Jokes aside, as technology gets more layers there's increasing concerns about who will maintain the hardware and software systems we all increasingly … | Continue reading
Using software can be hard. All those form fields, menu items, interactive widgets and more... continually changing. So why make it harder for people by strewing all these user interface elements around a screen? This happens enough in applications that it needs a name. So let's … | Continue reading
Lots of things make startups hard... building teams, shipping products, finding customers, earning revenue... to name just a few. But when there's an endless list of things to do what takes priority? I'd argue it's getting good at learning. When you start a company, you may have … | Continue reading
In his AI Speaker Series presentation at Sutter Hill Ventures, Mark Horowitz discussed the current state of hardware chip design and scaling along with significant challenges as Moore's law comes to an end. Here's my notes from his talk: We don't recognize is how pervasive our n … | Continue reading
In his Three Conversations in Design presentation at Convey UX Andrew Hogan shared trends in user experience jobs, scaling, and the impact of AI on designers. Here are my notes from his talk: Between 2008 and 2018, there was a decrease in the number of industrial design jobs but … | Continue reading
In her Building Expertise into Generated Conversations talk at Convey UX Susan Hura talked about the impact of Large Language Models on the role and process of conversational designers. Here are my notes from her talk: It is a weird time to be a conversation designer. Two years … | Continue reading
In her Good UX is Good Business talk at Convey UX Amy Lanfear outlined the journey the Microsoft Security team's joint UX group underwent to make their business impact clear to executives. Here are my notes from her talk: In January 2022, a brand new division was been formed at … | Continue reading
We've all heard the adage the "the future is here it just isn't evenly distributed yet. With rapid advancement in multi-modal AI models and headset computing, we're at a stage where the future is clear but is isn't implemented (yet). Here's two examples: Multi-modal AI models can … | Continue reading
Mark Twain is believed to have said "There is no such thing as an original idea." The implication is that, as a species, we are constantly building on what came before us: inspired and driven by what we've seen and experienced. Personally, I like to phrase a similar sentiment as … | Continue reading
Like many technology nerds out there, I got to explore Apple's new Vision Pro headset and Spatial Computing operating system first hand this weekend. Instead of a product review (there's plenty out there already), here's my initial thoughts on the platform interactions and user i … | Continue reading
In the context of a software interface, things that work the same should mostly look the same. This isn't to say consistency always wins in UI design but common visual treatments teach people how to get things done in software. So designers need to be intentional when applying th … | Continue reading
When things are going well, it's natural to feel comfortable. The better things go... the more comfortable you get. This isn't just true for humans it applies to companies as well. But in both cases, being uncomfortable is a strategic advantage. I often got confused looks from … | Continue reading
In this two minute video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, I outline how to automatically answer people's design questions using the content from Web site using embeddings. I also explain why that approach differs from how broader Large Language Model (LLM) generate answers. It … | Continue reading
As Dave Fore once said: "features are the currency of software development and marketing." Spend time in any software company and you'll begin to echo that sentiment. But there's consequences... The first of which is feature-creep: loosely be defined as “the tendency to add just … | Continue reading
This two minute video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, highlights the importance of cleaning up the source materials used for conversational interfaces. It illustrates the issues PDF documents can have on large-language model generated answers and how to address them. Transcr … | Continue reading
If you've ever designed a conversional interface, you've probably found that people often don't know what they could or should ask. In this 2 minute video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, I discuss the importance of suggested questions in the Ask Luke conversational UI on this … | Continue reading
At the Designing for AI panel discussion hosted by Notion, Ryo Lu (Notion), Amelia Wattenberger (Adept), Omar Lee (Slack), and Adam Storr (Hex) discussed how they approach integrating AI models in the software they design. Here's my notes from the conversation. AI integration … | Continue reading
In this 2.5min video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, I walk through how a conversational (chat) interface powered by generative AI can cite the materials it uses to answer people's questions through a unified embedded experience for different document types like videos, audio … | Continue reading
To create useful conversational interfaces for specific sets of content like this Website, we can use a variety of AI models to add structure to videos, audio files, and text. In this 2.5 minute video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, I discuss how and also illustrate if you ca … | Continue reading
In this 4 minute video from my How AI Ate My Website talk, I illustrate how focusing on understanding the problem instead of starting with a solution can guide the design of conversational (AI-powered) interfaces. So they don't all have to look like chatbots. Transcript But what … | Continue reading
In the introduction to my How AI Ate My Website talk, I frame AI capabilities as a set of language and vision operations that allows us to rethink how people experience Web sites. AI tasks like text summarization, speech to text, and more can be used to build new interactions wit … | Continue reading
Recently I've stumbled into a workflow that's starting to feel like the future of work. More specifically, a future with really personal assistants that accelerate and augment people's singular productivity needs and knowledge. "The future is already here – it's just not evenly d … | Continue reading
As more companies work to integrate the capabilities of powerful AI language and vision models into new and existing software, high-level interaction patterns are emerging. I've personally found these distinct approaches to AI integration useful for talking with folks about what … | Continue reading
Too often, the process of design is cut short. When faced with user needs or product requirements, many designers draft a mockup or wireframe informed by what they've seen or experienced before. But that's actually when the design process starts, not ends. "Art does not begin wit … | Continue reading
With growing belief that we're quickly moving to a world of personalized multi-modal software assistants, many companies are working on early glimpses of this potential future. Here's a few ways you can explore bits of what these kinds of interactions might become. But first, som … | Continue reading
The mindset to “always be learning” is especially crucial in the field of digital product design where not only is technology continouosly evolving, but so are the people we're designing for. To quote Bruce Sterling, because people are “time bound entities moving from cradle to g … | Continue reading
Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation or RITE is a process I've used while working at Yahoo! and Google to quickly make progress on new product designs and give teams a deeper shared understanding of the problem space they're working on. RITE is basically a continuous process of … | Continue reading
In his Designing a Product with a Point of View talk at Smashing Conf Antwerp, Nick DiLallo described the role of writers in defining a unique product personality and brand. With placeholder content, it's hard to evaluate the interface. Words help make products simple and clear … | Continue reading
In her A Journey in Enterprise UX talk at Smashing Conf Antwerp, Stephanie Walter outlined her learnings doing UX research and design for internal enterprise users. Enterprise software is design complex due to a wide range of use cases and specific requirements. Most of the time … | Continue reading
In his AI Speaker Series presentation at Sutter Hill Ventures, Joon Park discussed his work on generated AI agents, their architecture, and what we might learn form them about human behavior. Here's my notes from his talk: Can we create computer generated behavior that simulates … | Continue reading
The AI-powered Ask LukeW feature on this site has been updated to not only source answers from Web pages but also audio files and videos. Today we're adding PDF support for 370+ presentations, which required some new approaches that I'll detail below. The Ask LukeW feature is pow … | Continue reading
When teams building products have an intimate knowledge of the problems they are trying to solve, user-centered design is easy. But as this four minute clip from my Mind the Gap talk outlines when a company grows, a gap between its efforts and its customer's needs can quickly ope … | Continue reading
Within companies around the World, it's common practice to look at what competitors are doing when designing new experiences. But these kinds of competitive analyses can easily take you off course just like bikers steering directly into trees. Anyone that's learned how ride a bik … | Continue reading
For product teams, there's no substitute for spending time with customers. This two and a half minute clip from my Mind the Gap talk outlines why alongside several examples of how. Transcript Most importantly, spend time with customers. To illustrate this, I want to come back to … | Continue reading
In the Principles of spatial design session at WWDC 2023, Apple's Design team walked through how to design new and existing apps for a spatial operating system and infinite canvas. Keep apps familiar A new platform offers lots of new possibilities, so try to balance that with wha … | Continue reading
At the WWDC conference this year, Apple announced their long awaited headset computing device, the Vision Pro. I've long been interested in augmented reality so... couldn't resist writing up some initial thoughts. As widely acknowledged, the Apple Vision Pro is a very impressive … | Continue reading
When we observe people using our sites, we find app install banners can also have a lot of negative unintended consequences. So it's probably worth asking, how do we end up with issues like these? This five minute clip from my Mind the Gap takes a look. Transcript Most of these … | Continue reading
To date, most digital image and video editing tools have been canvas-centric. Advances in artificial intelligence, however, have started a shift toward more object-centric workflows. Here's several examples of this transition. In canvas-centric image or video editing software, yo … | Continue reading
What happens when AI eats your Web site? The information you've spent years publishing gets reassembled in a new way for people to interact with your content. So far, we've integrated text-based articles and audio files into this experience on Ask LukeW. Today we're adding over 6 … | Continue reading
Augmented reality has the potential to bring digital actions and information to the real world. But what user interface paradigms could help make this a reality? Here's some speculation and pointers to more. For an augmented reality system to enable digital interactions with the … | Continue reading
Most mobile e-commerce sites can be improved. But how? This six minute clip from my Mind the Gap presentation provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to make a standard mobile e-commerce Web site more effective and why with supporting data and design tips. Transcript To illus … | Continue reading
As artificial intelligence models extend what's possible with human computer interactions, our user interfaces need to adapt to support them. Currently many large language model (LLM) interactions are served up within "chat UI" patterns. So here's some ways these conversational i … | Continue reading
We've added a few new updates to the Ask LukeW feature on this site powered by large language models (AI) including an integrated audio experience, conversation memory, and more. Here's the details: Over the years, I've had the pleasure of appearing on many podcasts and panels ab … | Continue reading
Designers that copy how most mobile apps onboard new users will end up with intro screens, tutorials, and more in their app's first time experience. This two and a half minute clip from my Mind the Gap presentation argues that instead, designers should focus on getting users to … | Continue reading
With the explosive popularity of Large Language Models, many companies are implementing conversational (chat) user interfaces for a wide range of use cases leading to more UI design explorations like... conversation scaling. Scaling conversational interfaces adjust the visual wei … | Continue reading