Surface Area
I listened to the latest episode of John Collison’s Cheeky Pint podcast with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week.
It was a cracker across the board. As a brief aside, I find it incredible that the average schmuck like me can listen in to two senior leaders of global technology companies shooting the breeze over a pint. Podcast culture is epic.
One point John made stuck with me: he talked about the breakdown of the “swim lanes” of traditional customer interactions as a function of AI. To quote John:
“A bunch of swim lanes have been established by random accidents of software and org charts […] and all those distinctions are probably going to get blown away”
No longer are teams and roles segmented, and customer interaction types clearly segmented (search, purchase, support, etc.) - it’s all one thing; a single, fluid conversation with a customer.
The extension of that logic is that every consumer touch point across every channel can become a transactional interface. The checkout surface area expands beyond the small corner of an eCommerce website or customer portal and moves towards the customer from every direction.
Executed tastefully, this has the potential to be a massive convenience factor. Executed tackily, it’ll be like being a tourist walking through a bazaar getting hassled and harangued from every angle.
There are so many interesting UX challenges that AI throws up. No wonder great designers are in such massive demand.