Considering how much of the current AI conversation revolves around how these tools will automate away people’s jobs, it’s worth trying to describe what automation does to a person’s tasks. While this won’t influence decision-makers who aim for headcounts to go down, we can still think about designing better systems.
There are three ways how automation can change a person’s job: do more of the same thing, do the same thing better, and do different things.
Better efficiency: automation helps to do more of the same given resources like time. Things like repetitive tasks or time-consuming tasks are good targets for this kinda of improvement.
- For example, in product design the new tools are promising to help create more screens faster, and go from an idea straight to a prototype, these are all efficiency improvements.
- As a pitfall for better efficiency, it’s often just part of the process that is easy to automate, and the parts that are harder to automate will get even harder, requiring more attention from whoever is doing the task. For most people doing the job, this will also mean more pressure to deliver more things in the same amount of time.
- A historical parallel would be the telephone and email that didn’t decrease the amount of communication, but rather allowed for both more communication and more complex systems established with communication.
- Design considerations would be to help the users to connect tasks to the overall workflow better, and get enough insight on the status of the automation runs to intervene if needed. So humans should be able to stay in the loop easily.
Better effectiveness: automation can improve precision and quality, following established standards more closely and making time for the person to create more personalized experiences.
- In design tools, I see less focus on this type of automation, maybe since quality is harder to measure. Most tools don’t seem to be focusing on reducing preventable errors or even applying heuristics meaningfully, outside of trying to follow design systems more closely.
- Since quality often depends on nuance, judgment, and understanding the complexity of human motivations and needs, it doesn’t always lend itself to easy automation. Automation bias leads the remaining people in the system to be less vigilant of possible errors.
- A historical parallel would be the standardized manufacturing process, which enabled more precise machinery that led to more consistent product quality.
- Design considerations: thinking about the existing workflow, what drives quality, and augmenting the human in the loop with new capabilities around the quality attributes helps to create centaurs building on both sides’ strengths.
Shift role and focus: with automation doing the more basic things, people can do higher value and more interdisciplinary things.
- In product design the shifting role is part of the discussion when designers are described as having to code, having to know more of the overall product development process, and needing to do more strategic and often cross-team work beyond their immediate product teams.
- Obviously, the pitfall is, that workflows, companies and maybe even what people would want to do often don’t enable shifting of roles or enabling a bigger focus, which leads to people getting laid off.
- A historical parallel could be how secretaries moved from typing letters to a broader role of managing offices and supporting executives and teams.
- Designing for shifting roles usually goes beyond immediate product design, as it requires changes more on the organisational level. However, with new people doing different things differently, there is an even greater need for thoughtful product design, connecting workflows across different disciplines.
A special mention should be how automation might enable new users to perform the same tasks. Like providing customer service in a foreign language, or improved accessibility to tools.
Comments