“And it improved the effectiveness of decision-making”, quipped my friend. He was talking about how a few event-based notifications improved the speed of data-driven decisions. The program monitors patterns and deviations in various business metrics (such as lead times and stock-levels), and proactively informs the concerned party.

“We have seen it before”, I mentioned. The whole premise of business events and business activity monitoring in 2000s were built on this concept.

“With newer and better capabilities in technology, we re-invent parts of the car, or even change its field of engineering!” Business activity monitoring was part of application integration and business process management layers in early days. Nowadays, we have data and analytics layers catching up to near-real-time latencies with much broader and efficient toolsets.

“So how did it improve the decision-making?”, I asked. Earlier users had to run reports, monitor dashboards. But now the information reaches out to them with a bit of predictive analytics and recommendations, for taking proactive actions. “We are reducing the need to look at screens!”

“Ah! Zero UI!” We are reducing or even eliminating user interfaces from business workflows. Though the field of Zero UI extends to voice, vision, and haptics, for a typical document-oriented business process it is much simpler. “Do you wonder how it helps?”, I asked.

Consider an approval workflow in a typical business process management system. Once a request or ticket is created it notifies a chain of approvers. Each of them reviews the request, add comments, or make modifications, and take an action - approve or reject. Sometimes, we have business rules engine to help the approvers or even to auto-approve the request. “By the way, this too we have seen before!”

“So why didn’t it work?”

“It worked well to the extent of our abilities to build and maintain the most comprehensive set of business rules.” With data streaming into analytics layers and AI/ML becoming widely accessible and efficient, we now can power these workflows and rules with artificial intelligence.

However, there are some considerations to take into account. Which use-cases qualify well-defined, real-time responses? Which ones should be left for probabilistic models? There are some use-cases where the rules need to be precise and well-defined. And there are many where the rules are ambiguous or evolve over time. There are some use-cases which needs to be real-time, with a synchronized response. And there are many where responses can be asynchronous or delayed. There are some use-cases that require information and action need to be linked (e.g., signing a document). And there are many where information and action are de-coupled (e.g., taking a corrective action on field).

“User Interfaces increases friction in the user journey, especially in the digital age”, I continued. “We had a principle in our user experience guidelines. If the system knows something, do not ask users to provide. If the system can take actions reliably, do not ask users to affirm.”

“Take for example the photos taken using mobile phones”. Today’s computational photography knows whether an image is pleasing, grainy, or shaken. It takes action on behalf of the user, improving the quality and appeal of pictures, using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Essentially, it replaces a need for post-processing and retouching images where precise changes or accurate representations are not needed. Zero UI for common image editing workflows!

“We take photos knowing this fact, and often we are disappointed if the device is not able to improve the picture on our behalf!” A thoughtful application of Zero UI techniques along with artificially intelligent systems will improve the user experience. Later, business users will demand it.

“In cars, gear shifter was a user interface. Steering is a user interface”. These days we are rethinking the user interface and user experience of cars, with self-driving cars and vehicle-to-vehicle communications.

“We have a lot of dashboards and reports today, and a lot more in the product backlogs! We need to change that pattern!”

“That’s right! Now you have to work towards finding and eliminating the layers of friction in the user journey!”