User Experience has become polyamorous
UX used to be a stable relationship between the user and the product.
There’s a third presence now... and it's unpredictable.​
Hello, AI.
Designing interfaces is no longer enough.
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We need to understand both human and systemic behaviour.
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How do we design around instability?
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It's not just about how AI behaves, but how people respond to it.
Humans rely on shortcuts when things are complex. We look for patterns and defer to confident output.
When information feels incomplete, we fill in gaps to create sense. AI fills in gaps to produce an output. These two processes are often mistaken for the same thing, because when a tool talks like us, we assume that it thinks like us.
These unconscious responses have always been part of how people use products. We skim, assume, follow the obvious path, trust what looks official, and like to reduce effort.
Traditional UX anticipated this by doing some of the thinking for the user and guiding behaviour step by step.​​​​​
Up until now, cognitive biases were managed by the structure of the interface.
​​​AI changes the conditions because the system doesn't respond consistently. ​​
Designing well in this space asks for more than an understanding of interface patterns or interaction flows. It requires an understanding of how people interpret authority when it speaks so confidently and can be so wrong.
We need to be clear on how trust is formed and broken, and how these probabilistic systems operate beneath the hood. How does this clash with human cognition?​
This is the territory I am exploring through my writing and research, by looking at both sides of the interaction rather than treating the system as a black box or assuming people respond predictably to fixed flows.