It's already late-January? Probably better ease into the year over here, with my first newsletter for the year.

By now, you're all probably tired of "2024 Predictions" posts. But I did want to kick 2024 off by sharing a few thoughts about where things might be taking us in 2024. They're not really predictions though. Like the rest of us, I'm still learning about AI, and am certainly no expert.

Let's call them my 2024 Scribbles.

1. AI hardware and screen-less devices

We're already seeing the first wave of personal AI hardware hit the market. Like the AI pin from Humane. Or the Ray-Ban | Meta Smart Glasses. Personally, I've am swooning over the Rabbit, launched just this month (and co-designed by Teenage Engineering). And I’m very curious to learn more about what Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking up.

No doubt, we're going to see a whole host of new AI hardware devices enter the market this year. The exploration of new form factors will probably lead to successful products. But like the Palm pilot, the Minidisc or the Blackberry, I suspect that some successed will be fleeting.

To be be honest, I'm not convinced that any of us actually need additional device types for AI. We certainly don't need more screens in our lives. My bet is that the screen-less AI devices are the ones to watch. Spike Jones was probably right.

2. AI product design tools

Despite all the advances we saw in the last year, there were no huge advancements in product design tools, save for a few fancy AI-driven Figma plugins.

I think that's going to change in 2024.

We'll see the introduction of new product design tools that not only speed up our workflows, but become our co-pilots. New design tools will help us to automate the mundane. They'll provide real-time suggestions and feedback on our work, generate new concepts and iterations. They will add new skills to the mix, complement our design skillsets ... They might even teach us to become better designers.

We’ve now seen demos of GPT-4 turning napkin sketches into fully-fucntioning (albeit simple) websites. In 2024, we're on the cusp of having tools that can do most of the design - dev handoff, without even needing humans. We'll soon be able to design files and convert them into functional code, without a lot of human oversight.

3 - A number one hit single

Get ready, AI will the charts this year! I'm predicting that we'll have an AI artist with an AI-generated single that goes to number one in the US. With that, there will be more debate about creativity, authorship, and the value of human versus machine-generated art.

Can i be sure that this will happen? Absolutlely not. But I can imagine a that we will continually see these moments in music, film and culture, where AI creeps in.

4 - Even better conversations with robots

2023, in retrospect, was bananas. We saw the blistering adoption of ChatGPT, and then a flurry of competing Large Language Models (LLMs) that were launched, with increasingly larger brainpower.

AI already excels in handling lengthy conversations, staying updated with fresh information, and providing creative, out-of-the-box responses. It can offer unique perspectives, adjust to feedback, and shines in tackling complex topics and solving nuanced problems.

But - As they say, "Today’s AI is the worst you’ll ever use". If you agree that 2023 was bananas, wait 'til you see what 2024 brings us.

I think we're going to see massive improvements to conversational experiences this year, driven by newer LLMs with increasingly larger context windows. This will introduce a whole host of new, emotionally intelligent AI assistants. From therapists, to advisors, to companions. Even partners.

As designers, conversational interface design - the design of the conversation experience that you want to have with your uses - will be an increasingly important string in your bow.

5 - The AI-driven Election

Urgh. I don't want to think about this too much. But I do expect that AI will dominate the media in 2024 because of the role it will play in the US election.

AI generated disinformation is going to go through the roof in 2024, and we'll completely lose the ability to know the difference between what is an isn't real. So that's alarming.

OK. Moving right along.

6 - Dynamic Interfaces

”Computation continues to get more powerful, and with the learning cycle being accelerated with AI, I believe there is a world where interfaces will not only present themselves in precise use cases, the application will re-design the interface itself based on feedback.”

David Hoang - Dynamic Interfaces

People like David and Jordan Singer have really got me thinking about the idea of a dynamic interface. It's the idea that user interfaces are no longer rigid structures, but self-generated experiences that can be spun up to solve unique user problems on the fly.

Imagine the future of the web, when interfaces are:

• Delivered in real time - Real-time generation of an interface that can respond to user-input.

• Personalized and Predictive - Experiences that are tailored to individual user preferences and behaviors.

• Always Learning and Evolving - A dynamic interface has the capacity for continuous learning, iteration and adaptation.

• Fluid and ephemeral - Can you imagine a UI that exists for one single interaction? Dynamic interfaces can re-organize to create intuitive experiences that meet users in the moment, and disappear when that moment's gone.

• Inherently user-centric - dynamic interfaces are not one-size-fits-all approaches to appeal to everyone. Instead, they adapt to the unique need of each user, fostering even closer connections between people and technology.I really don't know if this scribble will become reality in 2024, but it's conceivable that it will happen soon.

Dynamic interfaces will undoubtedbly go hand in hand with a mature design systems, to serve up the atoms, molecules and organisms that are needed in the moment. It's a good time to be working on design systems.

7 - Algorithmic Pushback

Remember the olden days of the internet, when their wasn't algorithms? When we discovered new things via human-curated recommendations, via blogs and online mixtapes and forums and tumblrs?

Now that everything is forced to us by hyper-personalized, overly targeted, AI-driven alortihms, we've lost a lot of the Internet's original charm.

I wonder if we might see more of a backlash to AI, and a longing for the good old days. Might we see a push back against AI recommendation, and a throw back to the internet curator? I kinda hope so.

Happy new year readers.
Ben