Building Developer Trust in AI Products
Creating a framework for developer-AI collaboration to increase developer productivity
Please Note: The finer details of this work (including the name of the client) have been withheld due to an NDA agreement.
Competitive Analysis
Literature Review
The Methods
The research was presented to the CEO and Founder of the company.
I was awarded a “Doing-Great-Things” award, which is an internal recognition given to Blink employees for going above and beyond in their work.
The Impact
Lead UX Researcher
My Role
Project director
UX Research Assistant
Project Manager
Product Manager (Client)
Staff UX Researcher (Client)
Sr. UX Researcher (Client)
Collaborators
🧑🏻💻
✦
🧑🏻💻 ✦
Delegate appropriate tasks to UX Research Assistant
Develop a strategy for conducting the literature review and competitor analysis
Collect, organize, and synthesize 150+ sources from academic and industry
Collaborate with the client and project director to develop a reporting strategy and storyline
My Role
Our client was a Fortune 100 company looking to build AI assistance for developers. They wanted to understand how AI can increase developer productivity and the landscape of tools in this area.
Research Objective
We conducted a competitor analysis and literature review.
Research approach and methods
The client was working on a limited budget and lacked sufficient funds to conduct primary research on this project. Therefore we suggested a combination of an industry-focussed literature review and competitor analysis, which would allow us to get valid insights on a limited budget.
Why did I choose these methods?
💡blog
Here’s a blog post I authored on how desk research can help uncover actionable insights within a limited budget and scope!
Some strategies I used for the literature review:
Feed-backward search (Using references that other people used):
Feed-forward search (Identify more recent sources using the older ones):
I used AI engines like ChatGPT to summarize research papers and understand keywords to use in my search efforts.
🚨 A surprise challenge!
We had to re-calibrate our plans in the middle of our research because of the public launch of ChatGPT.
Key Takeaways
We learned from our analysis that though several developer-AI tools existed, few seemed to focus on the developer experience of using them. As a result, developer productivity with those tools was sub-optimal.
The literature review revealed several interesting insights about the “human factors” influencing developer-AI collaboration, with trust and feedback being the major ones. We used our research to develop a developer-AI collaboration framework, which could be generalized to many AI use cases.
Our research informed the launch of several of the client’s developer-centric products.
On a personal front, I was awarded a ‘Doing-Great-Things’ award, an internal recognition given to BlinkUX employees for going above and beyond in their work.
Impact
Some features have been blurred to protect client confidentiality
Some features have been blurred to protect client confidentiality
Recognition
“Thank you so very much—each and every one of you. These types of projects take a village—and yours is rad! Special thanks to each of you for what you leaned into, with regards to the past 10 weeks or so, to make the workstreams and end product so successful. Also beyond being super capable, articulate and incisive professionals, you're just very good people, and that matters in challenging times such as these, between the ongoing pandemic and mass layoffs. This project was a bright light. Thank you again”
— Staff UX Resercher & AI Interaction Patterns Lead (Client)
“Ani did exemplary work on the Dev Assistance/ML Tools desk research project. He was proactive in anticipating and preparing for client interactions, flexible in fielding detailed questions and project pivots, and delivered excellent work that excited the discerning client. We are expecting to have follow-up projects with the client based on the strength of our growing relationship and the impact of Ani’s work.”
— Head of Research, BlinkUX
“Throughout the last couple months, Ani demonstrated leadership through being especially organized, proactive, thorough, and handled client conversations very well in the AI Dev Tools project. Ani consistently anticipated the needs of the client, fully engaged them in conversations to elicit feedback that make the output of his work more impactful, listened intently to gain a full understanding and proactively incorporated and applied that feedback to future deliverables.”