Understanding and dealing with usability side effects of intelligent processing

Abstract

The inclusion of AI in an interactive system brings many potential benefits, but there are also potential side effects for the usability of the systems that ought to be taken into account from the very start. This article offers a systematic method for analyzing such usability side effects, the goal being to provide a solid basis for decisions about how to avoid or mitigate them. The analysis schema is applied in turn to nine classes of side effect. Many ideas that have been discussed in earlier literature are synthesized within this framework, which also brings into focus some concepts and issues that have received little attention so far. Copyright © 2009, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.