In software development, success means going beyond meeting requirements. We must create products that surprise and delight users and are innovative, create impactful solutions, Ken Hughes said in the keynote “Connection is Everything” at Goto Copenhagen. AI can help us connect with customers and create better user experiences.
With the emergence of the Beta generation, there are seven distinct consumer demographics to serve, each with unique needs that we must satisfy as developers, Hughes said: Traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and Beta babies. By exploring and understanding the values of the modern customer connection, we can build brands and a business for future success, he mentioned.
Everything comes to the customer today, Hughes said. Food deliveries and taxis come to your home by using an app. We need to shift from process to user experience focus, from software solutions to a user solution mindset.
Software is the oxygen on which the whole world runs; it connects everything, Hughes argued. Writing software, developers connect people to other people, connect businesses to their customers, connect patients to their healthcare providers, or connect us to our financial planning. Ultimately, software makes the fundamental difference in terms of connection.
AI will allow us to connect with customers; it can do the heavy lifting in terms of process, Hughes said. Anything you can do with AI in terms of software development and for your customers to create better user experiences, that’s what the customer wants in the end.
Consumers reach for their digital devices in a “digital first world” for answers to their questions, Hughes explained:
Every brand proposition has to be part physical, part digital. Customers now expect digital to drive their experiences.
AI is not about productivity and efficiency – it is about using technology to better connect with customers and create better user experiences.
Hughes suggested getting away from process and operations, and product and code, focusing not on the software solution, but on what challenge and what user solutions are required:
It’s the difference between selling a drill and selling a hole. What you want is the hole. You don’t need the drill, it’s just a tool that gets you there.
We should focus on the client, the user, what they want, and what they’re trying to achieve, and work back from that, Hughes said. That’s a philosophy, a culture. It’s less about the coding and more about the caring. The industry needs to move from being technologically operationally driven towards customer centricity as a core philosophy:
The software development business needs to create software products that go beyond expectations, that excite customers, and make them think, wow, I didn’t even know this was possible.
UX has become an inherent part of most companies’ strategy. We are moving towards a model that is based around putting the relationship at the centre, Hughes said. The more we embed emotional response and authentic, compassionate customer interactions in user experience, the more we can build a bond with a customer.
In our future deep-fake, AI-fuelled world, authentic relationships will be everything, Hughes concluded.
InfoQ interviewed Ken Hughes about connecting with customers.
InfoQ: How does having many different generations impact software products?
Ken Hughes: Different generations will always have different needs from products and services. From a technological point of view, younger generations require authenticity, direct feedback, convenience, and hyper personalization.
The values that previous generations that came before had, that we had previously designed products around, may be irrelevant today. We need to keep pace with the modern consumer as they’re changing value sets. Understanding what those values are and then feeding those values back into any kind of product design is the key.
InfoQ: How can we use artificial intelligence to connect with customers and create better user experiences?
Hughes: Agentic AI is going to change the nature of consumerism, no longer will we have consumers making their own decisions. The AI agent will make decisions for you, subject to obvious initial controls. This is a revolution in consumer decision-making because ultimately we’ve always had B2B or B2C and now we’ll have B2M, business to machine. Machines take over the decision-making process; they’re starting to buy things for us, make our lives easier, and make our choices easier, which is obviously much better.
InfoQ: What’s your advice to software developers and architects for creating software products that excite and delight customers?
Hughes: Excite and delight is all around going beyond expectations, delivering beyond what the client expects. AI is so powerful today; the solutions are out there.
Anything in terms of data that’s harvested needs to be used, needs to be hyper-personalized, needs to make my life easy, and needs to be able to be predictive and not reactive.
