Designing Assistant Technology

When artificial intelligence is designed poorly, it diminishes people’s skills rather than enhancing them. It can even make users less capable and more dependent on AI. In Designing Assistant Technology, Christopher Noessel provides a framework for how to use AI to assist users, as well as mitigating the risks of de-skilling and overreliance on AI.

Who Should Read This Book

This book was written with four audiences in mind:

• Product owners and technology strategists who want to ensure that the software they offer is doing everything it can for users and their organizations.
• Interaction designers, user experience professionals, educators, and students who will build and inform the direct experiences with these systems.
• Futurists and tech sector pundits who might want to understand that AI is only as dark as they let it become.
• Everyone else because part of the responsibility of being a citizen is building literacy in the major forces at play, what biases those forces have, and what needs to be done to combat negative effects.

Takeaways

You’ll learn to:

• Understand the conceptual difference between an agent and an assistant.
• Better understand your business’s challenges and how AI can help.
• Incorporate the book’s framework into an existing design process.
• De-risk how assistants are introduced to a workflow.
• Learn design patterns to mitigate the risks of assistants.
• Rely on AI assistants just enough, but not too much.