Should UX Design Remain Human Work?
1. Work to keep human even when AI performs better
Human-Reserved Jobs is a proposal about the values we want to preserve, rather than the limits of technology.
- Bill Gates proposed reserving work such as childcare and jury service for humans, much as we set aside nature reserves.
- If UX is defined solely as producing screens and mockups, the case for reserving it for humans becomes weaker.
- The question changes when the role also includes representing users’ interests, deciding what to optimize for, and taking responsibility for the results.
- If a relationship with a person is part of a service’s value, removing that person changes both the production process and the nature of the experience.
2. Four criteria for judging the human role
Instead of vaguely identifying work that requires empathy, we can ask the following questions about each task.
- Relationship: Is forming a relationship with a person part of the service itself?
- Work such as childcare, caregiving, and psychotherapy, where relationships are part of the experience
- Legitimacy: Does the task exercise authority over others and require someone accountable for the decision’s consequences?
- Work such as judging and child protection, where accountability matters as much as the accuracy of the judgment
- Development: Does performing this work develop the next generation of experts?
- Check whether junior staff will still have a path to developing judgment and experience once entry-level tasks are automated
- Preference: Do users want a person, and can they actually choose one?
- Consider that costs and the structure of supply may eliminate that choice even when people prefer a human
3. A minimum level of human participation
The author’s Human Floor proposal defines the meaningful human participation to retain as automation advances.
- Protecting entire professions could create lobbying contests and inefficiency. Instead, distinguish three conditions for participation.
- Presence: People participating directly in relationships, physically or socially
- Authority: People holding final responsibility
- Opportunity: Opportunities to become experts through practical work
- Other tasks can be actively automated while this minimum is preserved.
- The cost of maintaining human participation also needs to be addressed. What to preserve and who will bear the cost are connected questions.
