How to design AI Features that actually work for people – Berlin

As product teams race to include AI in their products, they too often rely on a good old-fashioned patterns like an assistant, or a chatbot.

However, this experience is often painfully slow, the responses are generic and users have to meticulously explain to AI just what exactly they need — over and over and over again.In fact, as it turns out, many AI features are very slow, repetitive, inefficient and difficult to use well — not to mention issues of accuracy, reliability and trust.

Let's see how to change that.In this workshop with Vitaly Friedman, senior UX consultant with the European Parliament and creative lead of Smashing Magazine, we’ll explore brand new design patterns for better AI experiences, with daemons, clustering, style lenses, structured presets and templates, dynamic editing, temperature knobs and everything in-between!

We’ll explore how we can help users find answers and get work done better and faster — with better scoping, style lenses, clustering, recommendations, feedback loop and plenty of other interaction patterns.

In the workshop, we’ll cover:

• Usability challenges of AI products, e.g. context awareness, capabilities awareness, discoverability, chatbot UX
• How to help users articulate intent and navigate AI output faster and more precisely, with style lenses, daemons, temperature knobs etc
• How to turn AI’s static output in a dynamic and proactive UI
• How to design AI canvases and conversations and support users in navigation between both within the same UI
• How to use clustering, tabs, dynamic views to help users explore data from various perspectives
• How to design for agentic UX, and how to support people in complex flows and tasks
• How to consider accessibility and sustainability in AI interactions
• How to help users develop trust and confidence for AI interfaces.

We’ll be starting off by exploring things we’ve learned about AI so far, practical design patterns and plenty of practical examples of AI products — successful and not. Then, for a given task, we’ll be breaking into groups and designing (and reviewing) AI experiences on paper.Participants will leave the workshop with a toolbox of practical techniques and design patterns to apply to their current or upcoming projects right away. Most importantly, they will learn how to use AI as a new material, its constraints and limitations, product challenges and how to apply design patterns to make the most out of AI-enhanced products.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for product designers who’d love to learn about to design interfaces that let users make the most out of your AI systems. I’ve been running this workshop with dozens of teams, both remote and in-person, and as a part of the ongoing workshops online and within the European Parliament. I’ve been also running it with small and large organizations, and have a number of upcoming engagements with larger companies in the upcoming months.

Key takeaways

Frequent usability challenges that users experience when dealing with AI features at home and in their workplace,- Practical design patterns from various AI products and interfaces that will give participants actionable takeaways and applicable solutions to keep in mind,- How to make AI more predictable and more useful for people, so they value it, trust it and actually use it.

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