Designing experiences that your users will love.
AI in UX design
By Julie Ravn, Creative Director
Most people have experienced it: You sit with a blank document, open an AI tool and in a few seconds get a structured draft served. It feels effective. And often also impressive.
AI has already made its inroads into many parts of the working day. It is used to structure meetings, generate content, create visualizations and qualify ideas. Increasingly, technology is also becoming part of the work on UX design and the development of digital products. Here, AI can quickly propose information architecture, user flows and interface solutions. It opens up new possibilities.
But when technology starts to influence the choices that shape the user experience, it also becomes important to be aware of how it affects the design process – and ultimately the product users encounter.
AI is beginning to shape the user experience
AI works based on patterns in existing data. It is trained on huge amounts of content and is therefore very skilled at identifying the probable and the familiar.
In UX design, on the other hand, we rarely work with the average.
Digital solutions must work for specific users in specific situations. They must support specific workflows, solve specific problems and fit into an organization or business model.
If AI starts suggesting structures, user flows, or interface elements early in the process, it may come to set a direction before the user's needs are clearly defined. It may seem like a quick shortcut in the development work, but in practice you risk starting the design work somewhere in the middle of the process.
For many organizations, this can create well-known challenges:
- Digital solutions that seem logical on the surface but do not suit users' workflows
- Interfaces that feel generic or standardized
- Functions that are technically well-functioning, but difficult to understand in practice
As the design process accelerates, it becomes even more important to ensure that the direction still arises from the user's needs.
When digital solutions start to look alike
Another challenge arises when many organizations use the same AI models and design tools.
The result can be digital products that gradually begin to look alike.
It often manifests itself in the structure of user interfaces, in language tone and in interaction patterns. The same types of navigation. The same components. The same flows.
Technically, the solutions often work fine. But the experience may lack some of what makes a digital solution intuitive and meaningful for the specific target group.
In the long term, it can also have strategic consequences. When digital products appear more uniform, it becomes more difficult to create a clear digital position in the market.
UX design is largely about translating business strategy and user insight into concrete experiences. When design choices are increasingly influenced by generic AI proposals, it can become more difficult to maintain that particular differentiation.
Users quickly discover when something feels automated
Users' expectations for digital experiences have changed significantly in recent years.
Many users – especially those who grew up with algorithmic feeds and personalized interfaces – have a high digital awareness. They notice when solutions feel generic, opaque or too automated.
It affects both trust and commitment.
In practice, it is through UX and UI that users encounter AI. It is in the interface that the technology is either experienced as an aid or as something that creates friction.
Among other things, it is about:
- how clearly the user understands what the system is doing
- how much control the user experiences having
- whether the interactions support the user's task or the system's logic
When AI becomes part of digital products, UX design therefore becomes even more important.
The role of UX design in an AI-powered reality
AI can be a powerful accelerator in design processes. It can help with idea development, generate proposals and test different solutions quickly.
But the strongest user experience still occurs through understanding the user.
In UX design, work typically starts with the user's context: their goals, their workflows and the challenges they try to solve in their everyday life.
Once that understanding is in place, AI can be an effective tool for qualifying solutions and exploring new opportunities.
The technology can significantly strengthen the design process – as long as it does not define it.