UI/UX plays a significant role in any brand’s success. It can help you reach new heights but only if you deliver a good service. This article takes you through the latest UI/UX trends and its benefits to help you understand it better.

What is the difference between UX and UI design

Both mobiles and desktops have a majority of digital users onboard and both the platforms have their own significance. For instance, desktops serve the purpose of quick access to web pages and mobile phones are ideal for creating engagement. Aesthetic graphics and engaging content must be on point while designing a digital presence but another important thing that most of the designers overlook is good user experience and interface. But what exactly is UI and UX?

What is UX?

UX is the abbreviated form of User Experience and it is based on the idea of creating a system that provides the users with the best experience. It aims at turning your customers into loyal customers by offering a positive experience to them. UX is accountable for a user’s journey through the mobile app or website which eventually becomes the deciding factor for the success of the business.

What is UI?

UI is an abbreviation used for User Interface and it’s the way using which users can interact with any mobile application. User interface design for mobile applications focuses on delivering easy, enjoyable and effective interactions between users and the application. In IT, User Interface refers to any device that allows the users to interact with monitors, screens or mobile devices. The primary goal which UI aims for is to provide the best interaction possible.

What are benefits of UX/UI

1. Encourages the use of interaction: Creating content is not a hard task. But creating content that people would like to interact with, is the real challenge. Be it in the form of text, images, advertisements, or call to action, everything must lure the user. There are several techniques to encourage user interaction such as producing the content that appeals to the targeted audience. It can also be about personalised features based on consumer behaviour or things they like. People prefer a software that has consistency in design, is predictable, and comfortable to use.

2. Generates loyalty: A good user experience can create customer loyalty for your brand. An application or website that offers easy functionality and backed by great service will make your users use it again and again. The designer can create a Customer Journey i.e. CJM Map to achieve it. It will help the designer to map the entire journey of the user through the website or the mobile application. This journey must be thoroughly tested to make sure that a user’s interaction with the product is as smooth and easy as possible. It’s more like putting the design team in the shoes of the user and thinking from their perspective.

3. Generates recommendations: An interactive user experience design is the key to encouraging word of mouth recommendations i.e. it should be good to an extent that the users can’t stop talking about it. A well-designed site or application with the ease of use, offering great features and usefulness will encourage people to tell others about the service. A part of user experience is meant to make sharing easy and a free recommendation from a user itself is way more impactful than a paid advertisement.

4. Reduces development costs: A stellar user experience helps you keep a project within budget by lowering development costs along with extensive user research, prototyping, and usability testing. By doing this, you can ensure that development time is targeted on the areas of functionality that matter. This focused approach helps you create better initial design specs, reduces the risk of feature creep, and provides more relevant content. It greatly erases the need for last-minute redesigns and enhancements.

5. Reduces internal costs: User experience is an end-user focused approach that concentrates on the design and development, keeping in mind what users want and not what developers think they want. It not only saves money on development costs but it also helps businesses to wisely use their internal resources. For instance, the design will help you identify the products liked or wanted by people. This would help the sales and marketing department to put their efforts on profitable products instead of putting it on the less profitable ones. Moreover, it reduces the need for manual intervention and hence reduces the support costs eventually.

What are latest UX/UI trends

1. Animation: It makes web pages or mobile applications more appealing to users as it connects with the customers more than any other design. This tool is getting popular amongst the designers as it allows them to create a positive impact on the users. Earlier, we used to have flat logos, icons, buttons, etc. but now they are getting replaced with animated buttons, icons, and even logos.

2. Digital illustrations for the web: Custom digital illustrations are trending in the field of UI and UX. These digital illustrations are generally used on web interfaces and add colours, designs while making the information more evident and interesting. They are widely used by blogs and service websites to beautify their website and present sober information in a modern and fancy way.

3. 3D designs: It helps you create more impactful design and it’s already being used in many games and movies with high functionality. A combination of animation and 3D is going to be the next trend in UI and UX.

4. Split Screen: The idea of using two screens simultaneously appeals to a lot of users. It not only looks cool but also allows you to gather more information at the same time.
5. Voice UI: Voice assistants like Google Home and Alexa have taken over the entire digital world of virtual assistants. People use these services widely to get most of their work done irrespective of its origin i.e. small or big. Performing tasks using your voice is a lot more convenient than operating a device with buttons and making it do the same.

NDN Group build a chatbot with personality for hotel group

At NDN Group, we help our clients map out UX/UI to understand their customers, define customer experience journeys and innovate with a strong focus on customers’ needs and awe-inspiring insights about them. From user personas and customer journeys to content strategy, wireframe to website and app design, we help our business clients tell their stories and engage with customers for scaling businesses.

NDN Group’s digital consultancy, New Digital Noise, has been helping a global hotel group to develop an AI-powered chatbot with persona and personality traits, thereby creating immersive and fascinating experiences to its customers. The bot can help guests make suite booking and restaurant reservations as well answer questions on thrilling entertainment and hotel facilities.

To create persona and personality for the bot, our team has gathered insights to understand more about the hotel group from its brand persona, daily operations, gaming and entertainment facilities, world-class dining experience and luxurious and bespoke services offered to customers.

Creating a chatbot conversation flow and putting to the test

Our UX/UI team has arranged empathy sessions for the hotel to learn their customers genuine needs. With our five-stage process – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test, we empathise with the targeted customers through researches, interviews and sharing. We understand customers’ emotional needs, discover human touchpoints and garner insights on the needs of customers in different segments. Our team has created solid solutions to address users’ needs and built a prototype chatbot for testing/validation to excel to entire UX process.

Also, we have embraced six core human needs – Certainly, Variety, Significance, Love, Growth and Contribution – in the process. Then we have clearly defined the background, personalities, tone of voice and manner of the bot.

In the development of the chatbot script, we imagine how the AI-powered chatbot talks to customers based on its persona.  Based on conversational diagram, we have imagined the bot talking to customers in real time when writing scripts. We listened to characters or people who are similar to the bot persona. We try to avoid dead ends and leaving the user hanging. It mimics what we would hear from a concierge in the luxurious hotel. Finally, we have developed a prototype for the chatbot and fine-tuned scripts. We have interacted with the bot to excel its dialogue flow and make it immersive to customers, ensuring that the bot is helpful and meet customers’ needs and expectations.

Conclusion

Our User Experience/User Interface design services are thoughtful, engaging, user–centric. We work with our clients to define their business goals, and every industry is different. The trends of UX and UI have changed a lot and it will continue to do so. But one thing which doesn’t change with time is the quality of UX and UI. To derive better results and satisfy your customers, it is important to offer them an outstanding UX/UI services. Drop us a line at info@ndngroup.com to learn more about how our UX/UI services fit your business needs.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most popular emerging technologies. AI chatbots are transforming the customer experience in unexpected ways. In this article, you will learn how chatbots enhance customer experience and key benefits of using chatbots for your business.

How AI chatbots interact with customers

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most popular emerging technologies. It’s changing the business dynamics in a lot of ways and one such way is by enhancing the customer interactions. We have AI-driven chatbots that are transforming the customer experience and helping us unfold the newer business opportunities. An ideally perfect chatbot delivers a seamless customer experience in which users can’t tell if they are talking to a machine or a real human being. But before we move ahead and discuss the ways in which chatbots are transforming the user experience, let’s first try to understand what a chatbot is.

A chatbot is an AI-based software that communicates with humans through a live chat interface. This interaction can take place through platforms such as Slack, Skype, WhatsApp, a brand’s website or app, Facebook Messenger, and even Alexa.

Simple chatbots are capable of scanning the keywords from a customer’s inquiry and deliver pre-packaged answers. While on the other hand, advanced chatbots that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) use natural language processing and can create responses and conversations that are more complex. AI chatbots are more flexible than simple chatbots while speaking to the customers and when the human doesn’t give the exact message they have been programmed for. Instead, they keep learning from the conversations they have with the users to help customers with their queries.

AI-powered chatbots can tap into customer information and provide personalized experiences as they are better integrated with the CMS and CRM platforms underpinning a brand’s online presence. But how do they actually enhance the customer experience? Here are some of the most popular ways in which AI-powered chatbots are transforming the customer experience and providing customer satisfaction.

AI chatbots enhance customer experience

1. Seamless live chat:
   Customers can easily engage with chatbots in a similar way as they do with live customer support employees in an online conversation. Most of the chatbots follow natural language processing methods that allow them to analyse the questions asked by the customers and answer to them accordingly, meeting the needs of the client. Chatbots can easily be integrated with a company’s website or mobile application for better results.
2. Analysing customer data and insights: A chatbot can pop up on any product page that offers additional information about your services to boost the sales and purchasing process. They can also provide customers with product recommendations by analysing user behaviour. They keep a track of customers’ shopping history, modes of payment, etc and uses them to offer a better and enhanced customer experience.
3. Chatbots make friends and build relationships: Most of the companies believe that it would have helped in transforming the customer experience if their agents had more time to make outbound and proactive contact with their customers. Well! Chatbots can help in revolutionising the way brands stay in touch with their customers. Be it a simple email or a birthday text, or just taking friendly feedback about your services from the customer, chatbots can jazz it all. And as chatbots don’t have human empathy, they don’t have bad days or get frustrated from regular client queries which helps them provide a smooth customer experience.
4. Personalizing the customer experience: Chatbots are exceptionally well at collecting customer data from support interactions. After all, it’s the computer software powered by AI and machine learning that is doing the work. It helps the live support agents to personalize their interactions with customers by making use of this information. Chatbots work as virtual assistants that can easily feed customer data to the customer support agent in real-time, facilitating the agent to give the customers good information and solutions based on their current needs as well as past interactions with the company.
5. 24/7 customer service:
   Unlike your human workforce designated for live chat support that needs some rest, chatbots can work 24*7. Customers’ needs can arise outside of business hours during which your staff members won’t be available at their service but the customers need a way to seek out answers to their vital questions. A chatbot could be your saviour in those cases as it can answer to customer queries irrespective of the time so that your customers don’t have to wait for a response from a voicemail or email message.
6. Automated operations: Most of the operations such as customer support and in-store experience can be automated with the help of chatbots powered by AI. They can send timely notifications to customers about your product updates or new features. Using chatbots, we can implement smart shelves and they can help in inventory control as well. Automating your customer experience not only reduces the chances of errors caused by human intervention but also reduces the cost. Hence, chatbots are an ideal way to transform customer experience in a cost-effective manner.

Benefits of AI chatbots for businesses

There is a lot of benefits offered by the chatbots driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. They help businesses transform their identity by enhancing the customer experience.  A chatbot is an ideal choice for you as:

1. It provides you with a global goal and reach along with an actively growing base of customers.
2. It offers support across multiple channels such as website, in-app, on social media, and several other platforms.
3. It facilitates you with a 24*7 customer support team with high efficiency.
4. The usage of AI chatbots helps you reduce your customer service costs and find more efficient ways of scaling your customers.

It is evident from many studies and reports that modern customers want quick, frictionless solutions to their problems and instant answers to their questions. They don’t like to wait at all. Also, in a world where people have only been using phones for customer support, it is hard to adapt to AI chatbots. But there is a growing need and demand for smart and efficient solutions, just like AI chatbots. They come with a lot of advantages and bring new opportunities to transform your business. Hence, to stay in the competition, it is necessary to change and adapt as per the customer behaviour. Drop us email at info@ndngroup.com to learn how our AI-powered chatbot solutions fit your business needs.

Frustrated customers who don’t get quick answers may leave website and never return. Chatbots can eliminate that scenario and help you keep your customers.

Increase Customer Base

There is another benefit of using chatbots in business. They may help enterprises reach more people which can increase your customer base.

Since chatbots can be used in many applications, enterprises can take advantage of that to help businesses grow. Chatbots can answer multiple questions at the same time as well.

Streamline Procedures and Automation

Other benefits of using chatbots in business are that they help businesses streamline procedures and automation. When used on website they can provide fast, automated answers to most questions. Their use prevents customers from waiting a day or longer to receive responses as they would have in the past. This enables business to serve greater numbers of people while saving costs.

NDN Group and Mobinology’s chatbot service and solution

NDN Group and Mobinology, world-class business software developer, has forged global partnership to deliver enterprise-grade chatbot solution to empower enterprises to accelerate business growth. Powered by leading artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies, the industry-leading and end-to-end chatbot solution enables global and regional enterprises with secure, scalable and agile operations, combined with machine learning and data analytics capabilities. The all-in-one chatbot solution defines new pathways for enterprises to deliver seamless and personalized customer experience.

NDN Group and Mobinology’s intelligent chatbot offers distinctive capabilities at scale. We design immersive dialogue flow to chart out extraordinary dialogue and conversational flow to create high-impact and personalised customer experience. We also curate tone of voice and manner to reflect enterprises’ branding for creating maximum customer engagement and loyalty, and bot personality and persona to interact with users and immerse them in conversational journey.

The self-intelligent bot learns from the inputs it experiences and garners deep understanding on the intent behind customer requests as well as provide smart answers. Also, the bot augments the importance of Big Data through their automated data collection that enables enterprises to conduct in-depth analysis on the conversational journey and understand end-user behaviour. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) powers all forms of language recognition including Cantonese and switch languages to enable enterprises extend global reach.

The bot uses their wealth of knowledge to provide comprehensive answers to queries. It is also specially designed to parse documents, crawl website content and convert into rule-defined structure data. It is empowered to use real-time information for accelerating revenue opportunities automatically after conversation with customers.

Types of chatbots

Depending on how the specific bots were programmed, we can divide them into two large groups: working according to pre-prepared commands – simple chatbot and AI-powered chatbot.

Simple chatbots work based on pre-written keywords that they understand. Each of these commands must be written by the developer separately using regular expressions or other forms of string analysis.

Smart chatbots rely on artificial intelligence when they communicate with users. Instead of pre-prepared answers, the robot responds with adequate suggestions on the topic. In addition, all the words said by the customers are recorded for later processing.

Many business owners are beginning to understand what benefits chatbots can bring to them. This technology is still in an early stage, its capabilities continue increasing and the best chatbots have yet to be created. Invest in building a chatbot for your business and be at the forefront of innovation.

Enquires on NDN Group and Mobinology’s chatbot solution:

NDN Group email: info@ndngroup.com 

Mobinology email: info@mobinology.com 

From The Terminator franchise to Alex Proyas’s I, Robot (2004), we are all too familiar with big screen storylines depicting sapient Artificial Intelligence rebelling against its human creators and attempting to take over the world.

As amusing as these dystopian visions may be, they are a far cry from reality, and scientists are quick to dispel any overly-melodramatic predictions of an AI takeover. As computer science professor at University of California, Berkeley and artificial intelligence pioneer Stuart Russell explains, the risk doesn’t come from machines suddenly developing spontaneous malevolent consciousness, “because there’s absolutely no understanding of consciousness whatsoever.”1

In Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014), Ava, the first fully-conscious AI, tries to gain trust from a shy programmer Caleb. Although the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of the script are solid, human-level consciousness is unlikely to be realised in the immediate future, largely because it isn’t the main aim of AI research — most intelligent systems are built for specific functions.2

The potential of AI to better every aspect of our lives is immense. In the business sector, corporations are proactively experimenting with AI to save costs. This includes reducing manual labour and allocating laborious and painstaking tasks simply too intricate for humans to carry out. Did you know that Amazon is now utilising machine learning to predict customer behaviour? Allowing these intelligent machines to shoulder responsibilities can help us set aside time for more important tasks that require the human touch.

Yes, contrary to the threats posed in science fictions, AI is no emotional intelligence. They lack creativity and the abilities to build relationships and trust, as well as critical thinking and storytelling —  skillsets that are unique to us human and deemed impossible to automate.

That being said, like-minded scientists like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future super intelligent machines remain under human control. “Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.” reads an open letter the pair signed together with fellow AI researchers and entrepreneurs calling for future research in the field to focus on maximising the social benefit of AI.1

With these future-proofing measures intact, the rise of artificial intelligence will surely remain a recurring plot in movies and in movies only.

Reference

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/30/rise-of-robots-evil-artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeley
2. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11357792/How-realistic-are-the-robots-of-Ex-Machina.html

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is sparking off a new wave of disruption that comes at a skyrocketing pace — inventing new business models, reshaping industries, and building the impossible. As a forward-thinking business leader, how would you harness the change?

Cyberport’s Digital Entrepreneur Leadership Forum brought together inspiring minds on 1 February 2018, where they envisaged ways to embrace change in the new era of AI. Twelve key speakers from different sectors spoke to an audience of 450 about the practical implications of AI from technology, change management and investment perspectives.

NDN Group was one of the participating technopreneurs to showcase our innovative solutions at the Forum as well as sharing our views on the future of AI. AI, more specifically Chatbot applications, can help automate our businesses, driving cost down as well as improving productivity and efficiency of our business operations.

There is no lack of readily-available AI applications in the market, but none are viable unless fully-adapted to individual businesses’ existing processes. At NDN, we help corporate customised chatbots to solve problems and grow business.

Armed with AI machine-learning technology, we’ve integrated chatbots with the ability to process natural language. As AI progresses, chatbots will become more skilled in natural communication, emotional intelligence and data analysis.

With all the big data we are creating, improvements in algorithms will transform AI from a tool that the brightest companies use to gain a competitive advantage today to one that is required simply to survive in business. It’s time to embrace the change and unlock the full potential of AI technology for your business.