Over the past few years, I\u2019ve had many conversations with friends and acquaintances spanning a wide range of industries, including the civil service, agencies, consultancies, and the private sector.<\/p>\n
Throughout these conversations, the topic of AI has come up time and time again, with work covering fascinating areas such as housing, planning, retail, food, and finance. I\u2019m sure you have had these conversations too.<\/p>\n
Each exchange has brought tales, hilarious anecdotes and occasional horror stories, of how different organisations are exploring AI\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n
Alarmingly though, so many initiatives seem to be a solution in search of a problem, rather than a solution meeting a need.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, we are quickly and acutely getting to know what poor AX (AI experience) feels like; whether it\u2019s overzealous fraud detection, wacky voice recognition (ChatGPT still can\u2019t grasp my accent), or incorrect outputs that we must manually, and exhaustingly, correct.<\/p>\n
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While starting with the needs of humans isn\u2019t the only way to deliver effective solutions, it is a tried and tested approach that can reduce risk, improve usability, and help organisations avoid some of the common pitfalls of AI implementation. Neglecting the user perspective tends to lead to challenges like:<\/p>\n
There are tangible\u00a0benefits of starting with the needs of humans:<\/p>\n
Better journeys support higher adoption rates:<\/strong>\u00a0when experiences align with user needs, people are more likely to embrace them. User dissatisfaction often stems from poorly planned service journeys, which can hinder the adoption of new products, services and systems.<\/p>\n Good usability supports productivity:\u00a0<\/strong>helping users to be make less mistakes increases their productivity, research indicates that systems with high usability scores lead to substantially fewer user errors.<\/p>\n Increased trust:<\/strong>\u00a0delivering reliable, user-friendly experiences builds confidence in the solutions, your team, or your organisation. Trust can be a huge influence, particularly in the use of solutions where Ai is a factor.<\/p>\n Compliance and accessibility:<\/strong>\u00a0User-centricity can help ensure services meet legal and ethical standards. Making it easy for people to do the right thing often increases compliance with policies and governance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An effective way of uncovering these opportunities is through exploring the user\u2019s world.<\/p>\n Journey maps are a practical and structured way to do this. Advantageously many teams already have some form of these, or an alternative like service blueprints or process maps. When viewed through an Ai lens, these become powerful tools for spotting moments where technology could enhance, simplify, or even rethink parts of the experience.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s tempting to jump straight to solutions, AI\u2019s potential is vast and evolving too quickly to anchor thinking in specific tools. A more useful approach is to focus on AI\u2019s fundamental capabilities;<\/p>\nHow to identify human centred opportunities<\/h3>\n