Design for AI - the Invisible Features

The best AI, according to the text, acts without drawing attention. Instead of badges and demonstrations, it improves the product subtly, understands context, anticipates actions, and only appears when it needs to explain something or recover from a failure.

Reading notes

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• AI is already becoming common in everyday life, so the focus of design stops being showing capabilities and becomes integrating AI into the product.
• A good invisible feature makes the user perceive only that the task worked, as in Gmail’s spam filter or traffic predictions in map apps.
• The system needs to adapt to context, preferences, and previous behavior without requiring the user to spell everything out, avoiding a strangeness effect.
• Anticipation should happen without interrupting the flow, as in autocorrection and syntax completion, which adjust and suggest while the person writes.
• If AI fails, the product should remain usable, with a soft fallback, as Face ID that opens the passcode screen.
• In many cases, the best interface is no interface, especially in background optimizations that improve speed, efficiency, and personalization without visible controls.
• Invisibility does not need to be absolute; sometimes AI should become visible to explain something to the user or allow an optional action.