Shopify's user experience will soon ‘feel like sci-fi'
'Imagine an interface where you can quickly shift between talking, typing, clicking, and even drawing to instruct software, like moving around a whiteboard in a dynamic conversation,' Carl Rivera tells me. An experience in which users are not presented with a barrage of nested menus, but with a blank canvas that invites creativity aided by an artificial intelligence that knows everything there is to know about online and brick-and-mortar retail and marketing. A fluid interface that adapts and anticipates your needs, automating tasks and recommending actions like the most brilliant partner you could dream of.
That's a dream in itself, but it isn't a fantasy; it's Rivera's future vision for Shopify. Rivera is the company's new Chief Design Officer and he believes that, in the very near future, the e-commerce platform's user experience is going to feel like sci-fi.
Rivera joined Shopify through the 2018 acquisition of his startup TicTail. Right after that, he was key to launching Shop, the company's consumer-facing business. His new position directly responds to industry skepticism about design's relevance in an AI-driven landscape. In this time in which everyone is shifting to AI but almost nobody has a clear idea why, it makes sense that Shopify's founder Tobi Lutke thought he needed someone like Rivera helming that leading position.
'We're entering a new technological paradigm with AI,' Rivera says, emphasizing that now, more than ever, it is strategic for Shopify to have a clear design vision about how to implement artificial intelligence in a truly empowering way for every company, from small retail shops to corporate giants. The company wants to reimagine its user experience, transforming it into a powerful tool for designers and business people that is easier to use and saves more time than ever before. 'Half of the people are talking about design being dead because the programs can design for you,' he says. 'We take quite the opposite point of view at Shopify.'
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