UX design is an exciting area of web design that comes with the challenge of managing the myriad tasks that a UX team needs to wrestle with to create a great user experience. The possibilities are almost infinite - but your UX designer’s time isn’t. The pressure is always on to roll out the right design before the market overtakes us and the user looks elsewhere.
That’s why the advent of generative AI tools for UX design is such a boon for UX specialists. These tools have a great potential to enhance UX design workflows to sharpen specialist skills, expand creative options and, crucially, cut the time it takes to deliver on clients’ briefs. That means you can spend longer doing the work that really make a difference, while hiving off more mundane matters to the AI.
So, to save you even more time, we’ve scoured the market to suggest the top five AI tools for UX design that will help create outstanding digital experiences for your customers - and how exactly they’ll make a difference to your efforts:
1. Diagram, bringing magic to UX design
If you’re seeking some AI-powered UX design wizardry look no further. Diagram was recently snapped up by collaborative design tool Figma, giving it scale and allowing a wider community of UX designers to get involved. There are several Diagram products you can try out, but for this pick let’s focus on one that’s already in use and another which is about to launch.
First up, Magician. This is a neat plugin that conjures icons, text and images for your UX design at the drop of a top hat, with the obvious benefit of shaving time from the process so you’re free to do other things. There’s always a danger that creativity can be restricted to a tool’s inbuilt content options, but fear not - the possibilities here are almost endless.
In the near future, Diagram will launch Genius. It’s set to transform ideas into fully editable designs based on only simple product descriptions, allowing you to create and efficiently explore UX concepts - all alongside your existing design system. Auto-suggestions as you design are a cool addition.
2. Elicit, automating time-thirsty research
No UX design is complete without user and web data to draw on. A big problem has been the time-consuming nature of finding, synthesising and understanding such information.
Elicit, which calls itself the AI Research Assistant, crawls the web for relevant research papers you could be seeking to underpin your UX work. But that’s just the start: the AI then pulls together common themes from the texts it finds and provides a ‘front page’ overview of available research.
The tool claims it saves individual users more than five hours’ research time per week through its automation process. Most designers don’t want to get bogged down in tracts of text, so this time-freeing and headache-soothing platform is just the ticket. What’s more, the introductory package offers no-cost access to thousands of papers.
3. Capacities, a tool of note for admin tasks
Next up, we’ll turn our attention to another frustrating function of UX design workflows: note taking and content arranging. Simply put, Capacities scribbles summaries so you don’t have to.
Its website points out that humans like to capture, arrange and file information to make sense of it. This can be deemed especially helpful in an age where we’re bombarded with facts, data and messages everywhere we turn. But the very structure of this information can also be stifling for creativity.
The tool works on the concept of using ‘objects’ rather than files. This allows the user to link between different aspects of the workflow, ensuring nothing is lost and everything is in its place - but also providing you with the headspace that true creativity demands. This includes all the visual aspects that great design comprises.
In addition, Capacities has an AI assistant in beta to assist with thinking and writing. It therefore streamlines, but also stimulates.
4. Clueify, keeping eyes on the prize
Clueify takes UX design testing to a new level. We’ve all heard of eye-tracking studies for user insights but this tool cuts time, cuts costs and really cuts the mustard.
Its website claims that the tool delivers first feedback on your design concept in less than a minute after you upload it and get started, with more than 90% accuracy. That does leave a bit of slack, so it’s exciting to know that the service can get even better - potentially rendering traditional testing research obsolete.
The Clueify AI-driven eye-tracking tool helps UX designers determine user reactions and therefore provides fast and valuable insights into their on-site behaviour and attitude towards your UX concept. Less gut feel, a better use of budget, more time saved.
5. Topaz Labs, a resolution revolution
The market has been crying out for better AI tools for UX design that are specifically focussed on image quality. Gone are the days when site visitors would put up with grainy pictures as long as they found the info they were looking for. Today, they expect slick, stunning sites that please the eye in every way.
Topaz draws on the power and intuition of AI to form a deep understanding of the contents of each image you’re considering in your UX design. It enhances the elements that matter and fades ‘picture noise’ - cluttering detail - into the background.
The ability to enhance quality is especially effective if you’re using unique images that may suffer from issues such as blur - as photos capturing fast-moving objects might - or dim light. It can even cut out human error such as camera shake and missed focus. An altogether brighter picture for web designers!
UX design tools are your friend, not your boss
There you have it: five exciting AI tools for UX design, helping organisations to give their users best-in-class experiences. From the ability to scour all-important user insight far faster than a human reading alone, to the power to pick and manipulate the perfect image, they’re carving frustration from the UX design process and adding inspiration. What they all have in common, of course, is the time they save - but there is so much more to each of these tools, and hundreds of others besides.
Remember, though, that as revolutionary as these tools seem, they can’t do everything for you; and nor should you try to let them. The summaries and strategies generative AI pushes your way will never be 100% real-world applicable alone.
Those at the sharp end of UX design must still take car to recognise wrinkles in the AI output. That means conducting due diligence, testing out UX design at every turn; particularly when there’s a high degree of risk in the project and the possibility of brand damage caused by a ‘UX fail’. Review and assess the results of your AI-driven work before they form part of your final designs.
Overall, AI tools for UX design are there to improve the design process - not inundate designers with options that cause more complexity than they solve.
If you’d like to chat with us about how MMT can help you create outstanding user experiences, get in touch today and we’ll connect you with one of our UX experts who have helped organisations like yours build user-centric digital solutions at speed and scale.
