[Best of 2019] Why Google Duplex might make my design job redundant

The demo went viral and raised a lot ofethicalandphilosophicalquestions.

Last month, Google announced an update for Duplex: it can now use websites for you.

To understand why, lets have a quick look back at the history ofhuman-computer interaction(HCI).

The history of technology have been a constant battle towards making them more human.

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Early computers were a nightmare.

This was extremely tedious and slow.

However, computers could only understandtheirlanguage: code.

In the 80s, we fixed that with thegraphical user interface(GUI) and the mouse.

Despite being much easier to use, the GUI and the mouse are not perfectly intuitive.

Some people still struggle with them.

To get these people to properly use computers, we needed yet another leap in innovation.

That innovation was the smartphone.

I believe the touch screen struck a deeply human chord.

The fact that one-year-old children can use a smartphone is proof of that.

At every step of the way, weve also made computers accessible to a larger audience.

This shows how much progress weve made.

Duplex for Web is the perfect example of that.

In the demo, the assistant navigates a car rental website.

It fills in the form and makes choices for you according to your past history.

As a designer, I spent years learning how to make website pleasant and easy to use.

Watching the AI instantly filling the form felt weird.

Duplex is making websites redundant.

The point of user interfaces is to get computers to understand what we want.

AI enables this in much more human ways.

Duplex for Web is an early example of this trend.

It gives us a glimpse at what the future of user interfaces will look like.

Disclaimer: Tony does not work on Duplex and Googles goal with the project is not to replace designers.

Tonys views are his own.

The opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.

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