AI guidelines

Before designing, developing, and using AI, consider the following ethical and best-practice guidelines.

Not all uses of AI are good for your UX strategy. To make sure that AI enhances the user experience, consider the following practices:

• Identify real user needs to ensure that AI features will solve real issues to improve the user experience.
• Leverage AI to increase productivity and efficiency.
• Personalize user experience with AI to make engagements more personal and relevant.
• Make design processes more sustainable to save time, effort, and prepare for the future.

For example, it would be valuable to add features like:

• AI-driven search, to tailor search results to a user's unique needs.
• AI that helps streamline onboarding, data entry, or routine job tasks.
• AI that makes product recommendations based on a user's history.

It is not valuable to add AI features simply because they are new, trendy, or fun. They need to matter to the user.

AI is best when it enhances human abilities, not when it's used to replace humans. It cannot exist in a silo—humans help bring the value of AI to life.

To ensure that the design of AI systems is human-centered, follow these practices:

• Nurture collaboration and cross-team alignment.
• Welcome multiple perspectives to encourage creativity and help mitigate bias.
• Check AI output for accuracy and identify areas where meaning is lost, language isn't inclusive, or information isn't true. Ask peers to review your AI-generated deliverables to help fact-check and catch mistakes.

Transparency is essential for ethical AI usage. To help users understand and trust AI features:

• Tell users when AI is being used.
• Make its capabilities and limitations clear to set appropriate expectations.
• Explain how AI makes decisions.
• Keep users in control and let them decide how they interact with AI.
• Be clear and honest when AI fails or hallucinates.

Errors and failure are inevitable when working with AI, so it is essential that you are prepared to handle undesired outcomes. You should understand the risk involved in AI and the impact that an error may have.

To create a plan for issues, start by following these guidelines:

• When AI fails, be explicit about errors and let users regain control as they want.
• Provide easy access to human support.