Shaped by AI

The project goal

GenAI are changing how people expect to interact with all digital products, not just AI-based ones.

• If a user gets used to receiving immediate and personalized responses from ChatGPT, how will they perceive a traditional search engine?
• If they delegate the synthesis of complex information to an AI, what expectations will they have toward a corporate site’s information architecture?
• If they naturally converse with a virtual assistant, how will they evaluate a structured form or menu navigation?

We are not just observing the adoption of a new technology, but a potential change in the habits and mental models people use to relate to digital systems in general.

The Shaped by AI project was created to investigate two aspects that follow from this observation.

1. Map the change

Scientifically document whether and how the massive adoption of GenAI is changing:

• Users’ mental models: how they think a digital system “should” work, which cognitive metaphors they use, and what level of intelligence they expect from technology
• Behavioral expectations: preference for conversational interactions over structured ones, tolerance toward “static” or procedural interfaces, and expected response speed
• Emerging needs: new informational or relational needs, changing priorities such as efficiency versus exploration, and the evolution of trust and delegation toward automated systems

2. Guide the evolution of UX Design

Once we have analyzed how users are changing, understand how digital professionals will need to adapt their practices accordingly. The operational goal is to produce a reference framework that allows different professional roles to:

• Update design assumptions: verify whether established principles retain the same validity or require recalibration
• Evolve methodologies and deliverables: understand whether personas, user journeys, wireframes, and other design artifacts should incorporate new dimensions of analysis
• Anticipate future expectations: design today while taking into account where user expectations are moving

Digital Impacts

GenAI are shifting search, interfaces, and expectations toward new behaviours. The pages below collect the evolution directions described in the workshop Shaped by AI — Phase 2: the impact on digital professions, translated into concrete implications for the people who design and build digital products.

• What is happening — eighteen phenomena, each with its evidence and the limits of that evidence declared.
• Decisions — the eight choices those phenomena make unavoidable, each with an effect that still appears if nobody decides.
• Impacts — the same material reread from the standpoint of the person who has to do the work, function by function.
• Literature Review — the curated collection of sources every page above rests on, as far as possible.

Who the project is for

Primary beneficiaries: All professionals involved in designing and developing digital products - UX/UI Designers and Researchers, Product Managers, Information Architects, Service Designers, Content Strategists, Copywriters, Front-end Developers, SEO and Digital Marketing Specialists.

Scope of application: The project analyzes the impact of GenAI on all digital products and services, with particular attention to those that do not incorporate AI technologies - informational websites, traditional e-commerce, mobile applications, management systems, B2B platforms, and digital public services.

If the average user spends hours every day on ChatGPT to study, work, or shop, when they return to a “normal” site they bring new implicit expectations with them. It is precisely on these “traditional” products that the impact could be most disruptive.

Bibliography

The project aims to be grounded in a solid collaborative collection of scientific sources, case studies, and relevant articles on the topic. Explore the full bibliography, which is constantly updated, or the Literature Review section, which contains a curated collection of quotations from the most relevant articles on the topic.

Join the project

The project is open to all interested professionals. You can contribute by suggesting sources, sharing case studies, participating in roundtables, or simply following updates.

All the details are on the Participate page.