new technologies Articles & Videos

  • How AI Works and How Users Think About It: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about how artificial intelligence works, and how users think about it.

  • Designing AI Products and Features: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about recommendations for designing AI products and features.

  • Artificial Intelligence: Glossary

    Plain-language definitions of the AI terms that come up in product and design work, from tokens and context windows to agents, evals, and prompt injection.

  • How to Decide When an AI Tool Is Worth Keeping

    Pressure to adopt AI isn't evidence that a tool helps. The PROVE framework tests one tool against one task and produces a provisional decision you can defend.

  • Designing AI Agents: 4 Lessons from China’s Qwen Agent

    A study of Qwen's AI agent reveals 4 design lessons: support discoverability, reuse familiar patterns, handle personal data carefully, and protect user autonomy.

  • Humanizing AI Is a Trap

    LLMs humanize by design. Adding personality/emotion amplifies risk. Design real tools, not fake friends.

  • Explainable AI in Chat Interfaces

    Explanation text in AI chat interfaces is intended to help users understand AI outputs, but current practices fall short of that goal.

  • The VR Hype Cycle: Lessons for the Age of AI

    Hype happens when messaging becomes divorced from good experiences. Learning from the virtual reality hype cycle can help us avoid future distractions.

  • Initial Impressions of ChatGPT’s Agent: Successful, Shaky, and Slow

    ChatGPT’s agent successfully booked a restaurant reservation. But the process was time-consuming and vulnerable to misunderstandings and errors.

  • When Should We Trust AI? Magic-8-Ball Thinking

    It’s easy to place too much trust in genAI tools. Use only information you can verify or recognize to be true.

  • New Users Need Support with Generative-AI Tools

    First-time users of Chinese gen-AI chatbots struggled to understand the tools’ functionality. Better onboarding is necessary to avoid confusion.

  • The UX of AI: Lessons from Perplexity

    The NN/g UX Podcast featured Henry Modisett, head of design at Perplexity AI, who shared how to make AI tools usable and efficient for information seeking.

  • Should You Build a Smartwatch App?

    Applications native to smartwatch operating systems get used the most. Just because a new smartwatch app could offer basic functionality, it does not mean that users will find it valuable.

  • 6 Types of Useful Smartwatch Interactions

    Smartwatches are for more than just receiving notifications and tracking steps. They afford at least 6 different types of interactions that users find useful.

  • Virtual Queues: 13 Best Practices for Managing the Wait

    Well-designed virtual queues help manage the wait to free up users to do other things.

  • ChatGPT Lifts Business Professionals’ Productivity and Improves Work Quality

    In a study of business professionals using ChatGPT to write business documents, task time decreased, while rated quality improved substantially.

  • Guidelines for Testing Mobile Augmented-Reality Apps

    Whether you’re running in-person or remote research on AR apps, ensure that the test is safe for study participants, the task wording is easy to understand, participants know what to expect in advance of the session, and your recording equipment can capture the participant’s screen and their movements.

  • UX Guidelines for Augmented-Reality Shopping Tools

    Ecommerce AR tools are relatively new, so must be highly discoverable and easy to learn. Calibration issues run rampant, and users must dedicate focused attention to interact with this unfamiliar feature.

  • Augmented Reality for Ecommerce: Is It Useful Yet?

    Augmented reality is an exciting technology, but the experience of using it is underwhelming, which hurts its overall perception of helpfulness.

  • Making Cutting-Edge Technology Approachable: A Case Study of Facial-Recognition Payment in China

    First-time users were concerned after using facial-recognition payment. Better onboarding experiences can relieve concerns and form factual mental models.