How to Use AI to Improve Your SaaS App UX Design

Summary:

The public release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 marked a significant moment in the history of AI, with the potential to revolutionize human-computer interaction.
The article explores how AI influences and drives UX design, particularly in the context of SaaS applications.
AI in SaaS UX design involves creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces through an understanding of user needs and preferences.
AI-powered tools can automate tasks, analyze user feedback, and provide personalized experiences through natural language processing.
ChatGPT's capabilities have led to the development of various apps, including chatbots for customer service and productivity tools for content creation.
The article provides case studies on how AI can improve the UX design of SaaS apps such as Figma, LinkedIn, Zoom, and ChatGPT itself.
AI plugins can streamline and optimize the design process, leading to improved user satisfaction and innovative solutions.
By leveraging AI in UX design, SaaS companies can differentiate themselves, stay ahead of the competition, and create products that users love and continually use

‍

The widespread public release of the world's premier AI tool ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 was a watershed moment in the history of artificial intelligence. This groundbreaking language model was capable of generating human-quality text, and it quickly became clear that it had the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with computers.

The team of artists and UX designers at Bonanza Studios have been working closely with AI tools for many years. In this article, we provide a close look at how AI influences and drives UX design - including the ways in which it can be implemented into a business to drive maximum efficiency and profitability.

AI in SaaS UX Design

Design for Software as a Service

Designing for SaaS requires a thoughtful approach to UX design to ensure an exceptional user experience. By understanding the needs and preferences of users, product teams can create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. Implementing AI in product design can enhance user experience further. AI-powered tools can automate certain tasks, helping improve efficiency. Additionally, AI can also analyze user feedback and behavior to make data-driven design decisions. Strategic UX research plays a crucial role in identifying user pain points and optimizing the user journey. By using natural language processing, these applications can provide personalized experiences. Emphasizing UX design principles throughout the design process ensures that the final product meets user expectations and enhances the customer experience. With the right tools and a focus on user-centric design, SaaS companies can continually improve their products and empower their customers.

Examples: Use AI in UX Design to Improve the User Experience

How AI influences and drives UX Design.

Personalization: AI can be used to personalize the user experience for each individual user. This can be done by recommending relevant content, providing tailored suggestions, and offering personalized support.
Predictive analytics: AI algorithms can be used to predict user needs, behavior and preferences. This information can be used to improve the customer experience, target marketing campaigns, and prevent churn.
Automation: AI can be used to automate tasks that are currently done by humans. This can free up human resources to focus on more strategic and creative work.
Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can provide 24/7 customer support. This can help to improve customer satisfaction and reduce the cost of customer support.

Use AI to enhance user experience

Within a few months of its release, a slew of new apps rolled out to take advantage of ChatGPT's capabilities. These apps ranged from chatbots that could provide customer service, improving customer experience by providing relevant information immediately, to productivity tools that could help people write better content.

The impact of ChatGPT on the app market has been profound. It has led to the creation of new categories of apps, forced existing apps to rethink their approach to user interaction, and even forced the giants such as Google, Adobe, Facebook, and Microsoft to introduce their own Large Language Models (LLMs). In fact, it was perhaps the ultimate purpose that induced Elon Musk to buy Twitter to use the historical data of Twitter to train xAI, a new LLM that Musk believes will be the foundation of the "everything app."

Four AI Tools that Use ChatGPT

Chatbots: Chatbots have become increasingly popular in recent years, and chatGPT has helped to accelerate this trend. Chatbots powered by chatGPT can provide customer service, answer questions, and even complete tasks.
Productivity tools: ChatGPT has also been used to create productivity tools that can help people write better content, brainstorm ideas, and stay organized. These tools are becoming increasingly popular, as people are looking for ways to be more productive in the digital age.
Educational apps: ChatGPT is also being used to create educational apps that can help people learn new languages, improve their writing skills, and even learn about complex topics. These apps are making it easier for people to access education, and they are helping to level the playing field for learners of all backgrounds.
Language models themselves: OpenAI's own language model, GPT-3, powers ChatGPT, which is designed specifically for chat-based interactions. It allows developers to integrate natural language understanding and generation capabilities into their applications, products, or services.

The impact of ChatGPT on the app market is still unfolding, but it is clear that this technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with apps. This poses an existential threat to various apps, which are predicted to have a total addressable market of $908.21 billion by 2030.

The existential threat refers to the probable possibility that tech giants such as Microsoft and Google could essentially dominate the market by integrating their large language models (LLMs) into all their apps and introducing a general-purpose LLM that has access to apps to execute commands.

For example, ChatGPT recently introduced the ability for third-party apps to be triggered within its environment. This means that users could simply ask ChatGPT to perform a task, and it would then execute the task using the appropriate app.

Google could easily execute many of your daily commands needed to do your daily work.

For example, you could book an appointment with a simple command via the Bard interface. Google has access to your financial sheets, so you could get a financial analysis of your income in the last quarter.

Microsoft Copilot could send a request via Microsoft Teams to book a 1-on-1 appointment with your team member and offer some dates to choose from. Microsoft To-Dos have captured all your tasks, so Copilot could offer you an overview.

In such a tough climate for competition for SaaS startups against the giants, it is more important than ever for these startups to leverage UX design to differentiate themselves from the competition. If you can't beat your enemy, join them.

Ways to use AI in your SaaS Product: Speed

The core advantage of startups against giants lies always in the speed of execution. Releasing a feature to the market is a lot faster for startups compared to the giants such as Google.

There is now an abundance of open source LLMs at startups' disposal that allow them to adjust the code and internalize the technology into their tech stacks. This gives startups a significant advantage over the giants, who are often slow to adopt new technologies.

Some examples of open source LLMs that are competing to that of Bard and ChatGPT include:

GPT-Neo
Jurassic-2
Vicuna
LLaMA
OpenChatKit
ChatGLM-6B
Dolly 2.0

Case Studies: AI in UX Design of SaaS Apps

Figma

Figma is a platform that targets individual designers and teams in organizations. Figma is planning to leverage AI and integrate it into its apps. There are many use cases to address, such as image suggestions, creating icons, and user interface components. One of the core examples we are very excited about is helping designers face the blank canvas.

This is a well-known phenomenon among designers: getting inspired and kicking off a design project is always the hardest part. You receive the brief, you want to put together some ideas—for example, creating a moodboard, ideating on low-, medium-, and high-fidelity prototypes. Currently, you need to look at different sources like Behance, Product Hunt, or Dribbble to get inspired and get started.

But what if you could generate new ideas directly from your Figma environment? Here is a showreel that our UX design team created to illustrate our point.

The GIF shows how a designer can use AI to generate new ideas for a design project. This is just one example of how AI can be used to help designers be more productive and creative. As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative ways to AI can help improve the design process.

Here are some additional thoughts on how AI can be used to help designers:

AI can be used to generate design ideas. For example, AI can be used to generate moodboards, wireframes, and prototypes.

AI can be used to validate design ideas. For example, AI can be used to conduct user testing and get feedback on design concepts.

AI can be used to automate design tasks. For example, AI can be used to generate code, create assets, and manage design files.

Social networks based apps will undergo a massive revolution in the next few years. Platforms such as LinkedIn are sitting on massive historical data that map interactions between different people in the network. LinkedIn can leverage all this past data to generate relevant insights for its users. For example:

It can offer you the probability that you can start a conversation with another user.
It can offer you talking points and point you to shared connections that could introduce you to them.
It can offer you talking points and relevant information that accelerate conversations and help you expand your network.

In the example below, our UX design team showcased how LinkedIn can offer you recommendations as to how you're connecting with the person you'd like to connect.

The GIF shows how LinkedIn can use historical data to suggest talking points and shared connections that could help you start a conversation with a new contact. This is just one example of how AI can be used to improve the user experience on social networks.

As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative ways AI and machine learning will influence social networks. For example, AI could be used to:

Identify and recommend relevant content. AI could be used to identify content that is relevant to your interests and recommend it to you.
Suggest new connections. AI could be used to suggest new connections based on your interests and the interests of your existing connections.
Moderate content. AI could be used to moderate content and remove harmful or offensive content.

By leveraging AI, social networks can become more personalized, relevant, and safe for their users.

Zoom

Zoom is a popular platform, one of the best examples of an app that has achieved massive scale in recent years. It allows teams and individuals to communicate through different channels, such as videos, chats, and more.

One of the core use cases of using Zoom is to have video calls for different purposes. For example, job interviews or 1-on-1s. These meetings are of huge importance to all parties involved. With AI, Zoom can offer a slew of different solutions to help users prepare for these life-changing events. For example, if you have a job interview, you can practice and prep for the call using Zoom's AI assistance.

In the example below, our UX design team demonstrates visually how Zoom's AI assistance could prep you for your job interview.

The image shows how Zoom's AI assistance can help you practice your answers to common interview questions, identify areas where you need to improve, and even generate a personalized script for your interview. This is just one example of how AI can be used to improve the user experience on Zoom.

As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative ways that it will improve Zoom. For example, AI could be used to:

Identify and recommend relevant job postings. AI could be used to identify job postings that are relevant to your skills and interests and recommend them to you.
Automate the interview scheduling process. AI could be used to automate the process of scheduling interviews, freeing up your time to focus on other tasks.
Provide real-time feedback during interviews. AI could be used to provide real-time feedback during interviews, helping you to improve your performance.

By leveraging AI, Zoom can become an even more powerful tool for job seekers and businesses alike.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT and other AI-powered communication interfaces need to soon update their interfaces. Users will have many notes and go-to commands. ChatGPT could use its own intelligence to help users categorize their notes, save their most frequent commands, and offer suggestions ad hoc when needed.

In the example below, our UX design team showcases how easily ChatGPT could allow users to save commands as templates and offer relevant commands as users use the interface.

The GIF shows how ChatGPT can help users to save their most frequently used commands as templates. This can save users time and effort, and it can also make it easier to find and use the commands they need. ChatGPT can also offer suggestions for relevant commands as users use the interface. This can help users to be more productive and to get the most out of ChatGPT.

This is just one example of how AI can be used to improve the user experience of AI-powered communication interfaces. As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative ways for it to improve these interfaces.

SaaS apps are undergoing a massive transformation, and now is the time to include the massive capabilities of LLMs in your apps to create differentiation. Bonanza teams are prepared to help you uncover all the lucrative applications of LLMs to make your app more relevant to the market. Consult with us today.

Artificial Intelligence and Product Design

AI has become an invaluable resource for product teams looking to enhance the user experience by providing cutting-edge solutions in UX design, particularly in the context of SaaS applications. One of the key aspects is the integration of AI plugins, which offer a plethora of tools to streamline and optimize the design process. AI for UX design has proven to be transformative, providing tips and tools for product teams that lead to improved user satisfaction. The collaboration between UX and product teams is crucial, as AI is not only used in product design but also influences and drives UX design, including the different stages of the UX design lifecycle. An exciting advancement is the use of AI to generate copy, significantly reducing the time spent on content creation and allowing product teams to focus on refining their offerings. Furthermore, AI for product development has opened up new possibilities, empowering teams to deliver innovative and customer-centric solutions that revolutionize the SaaS landscape. In this ever-evolving digital landscape, leveraging AI to improve UX design for SaaS is essential for staying ahead and creating products that users love and continually use.

Use AI to Improve your Business

Designing for SaaS requires a strong focus on the UX design process to enhance user experience. Working with AI throughout the design process can significantly improve the customer experience. By employing AI-powered tools and algorithms, and by gaining a full understanding of AI capabilities, product teams can analyze user data and behavior to make data-driven design decisions. AI empowers the user by providing personalized experiences through natural language processing. Additionally, AI can automate certain tasks, speeding up the design process and improving efficiency in UX design. By strategically employing AI in UX design in SaaS applications, businesses can empower their customers, enhance the overall user experience, and stay ahead in the competitive market with cutting-edge AI technology integrated into their products

Bonanza Studios have extensive experience in helping SaaS businesses leverage LLMs to improve their apps. We can help you identify the right applications for LLMs in your app, and we can help you implement these applications effectively.

Let Bonanza Studios use AI to create new opportunities, enhance the user experience and improve your product.

‍