The world around us increasingly chases sci-fi stories with innovative technologies and their real-life adaptations. Pokemon Go, just a mobile game that blurred the division between the game characters on the mobile device screen and the real world outside offers us a classic example of how Augmented Reality can fuse digital world into everyday reality and vice versa.
Everything around us is increasingly getting intelligent and automation driven as well. Just think of visiting an online store where you come across product recommendations that you were browsing in another app and the typical choices that you always hold dear to your heart. Yes, this is how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies have become more knowledgeable about your uses and behavior.
The neat outcome of such technologies on the user experience is huge. Thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) now users can enjoy a never-before interactive experience while AI ensures intelligent automation to make things easier for users. Both technologies together are shaping the user experience (UX) landscape in a never-before manner.
Let us now explain the most impressive ways AI and AR technologies are shaping the app user experience.
User Experience Design Going Hi-Tech
One dominant philosophy about user experience design always brings simplicity and ease of use in the foreground, and it is true that simple design with a lot of white space, flat surface, low cognitive load and easy to understand navigation make a modern design. But this simplicity is only about visual aesthetics. Underneath, things are not that simple.
Beyond the so-called simple look and feel, user experience (UX) design is actually going hi-tech and is increasingly relying on technologies that make things faster, easier and more prosperous for the end-user experience. For example, complex AI and machine learning algorithms are helping users with more personalised recommendations, notifications and chat communications that they find useful. Similarly, Augmented Reality (AR) based interactions are helping e-commerce app customers to decide about purchases better.
When it comes to startup app developers Ireland comes with a promising variety of companies have made some AI and AR-based apps. It boasts of a developer community having experience in a multitude of cutting-edge app projects, from AI-powered chatbots to virtual assistants to AR-based interactive customer communication. It is interesting to see how they utilised these technologies to shape user experience or customer experience across mobile apps.
AR is Revolutionising the User Experience
Thanks to Augmented Reality (AR), app designers have now changed the way users interact with apps. UX designers and developers are increasingly utilising the AR technology to allow interactions that mitigate the differences between digital representation and real-life objects. From immersive game playing that requires real-life movement for playing a game on the mobile screen to the interactive 3D visuals that can incorporate the surrounding atmosphere of the users in real-time, the AR promises to revolutionise user experience is huge.
AR is capable of incorporating and mixing the digital data and the real world to offer smarter real-time feedback. Examples of AR-based app user experience are too many. The simple app that can read temperatures and can locate your phone inside the room by using GPS sensor to the apps that allows you try a pair of trousers on your uploaded photo before making an online purchase, the examples of AR-based app user experience has already become part and parcel of our smartphones flaunting lifestyle.
The promise of AR interaction for an engaging and immersive user experience doesn’t stop with the digital trial rooms and on-screen 3D visuals of your own surroundings. The gestures of mobile interactions that produce instant feedback with audible sounds and visual effects represent another facet of augmented reality. The haptic feedback on the screen that gives a near-real feel of the actual surface represented on the screen represents a massive upgrade from the erstwhile touch interactions.
Intelligent User Experience Made Possible Through AI
Those days are gone when we used to think of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as new ways to incorporate fun in our digital interactions. The user experience across the interfaces tends to become more intelligent and automation driven thanks to AI and ML technologies.
When you ask your Amazon Echo about the nearest clinics, it already knows about your back pains and the medicines you take. So, it suggests you clinics with facilities and doctors to treat back pain. More a machine or an app interacts with users or customers, the more it knows about you, and better it suggests solutions that are useful for the context. That is precisely the power of AI in revolutionising user experience.
With AI and ML technologies playing so big a role in shaping the user experience to orient with precise user demands and preferences, no UX designer and developer can take them for granted. AI and ML technologies in their current disposition are more about collecting and accessing user data to gain data-driven insights about users and utilising those data to fine-tune user experience.
Whether you are using a banking or financial app or shopping through an e-commerce app, it is your purchase or transaction history, in-app behaviour data, your preferences, financial history, demographics, etc. will be analysed by an AI-based algorithm to come with recommendations and suggestions that suit your context and needs best. Similarly, AI tools can come with user insights that UX designers can utilise to reduce pain points and improve user satisfaction.
Conclusion
Both Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have made UX design easier and richer. In the years to come, these two technologies will play a more impactful role in shaping the app UX.
