Home It’s Time to Shift Digital with Visual AI

It’s Time to Shift Digital with Visual AI

A seamless digital experience has long been the focus of product teams and technologists. From disruptive startups to the leading brands in technology and media, an emerging question is now top of mind. How can visual AI-based inspection technology help to eliminate the mundane tasks associated with quality assurance? It’s time to shift digital with visual AI.

The visual quality of digital experiences results in positive customer experience and offers a compelling competitive advantage for those who have put a focus on quality. After all, it only takes 50 milliseconds or less (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave.

digital customer experience
The visual quality of digital experiences results in positive customer experience.             Image Credit: Pexels

Don’t Jeopardize your Future by Using Outdated Methods.

In coming to grips with the new normal, users now expect quality digital experiences across all aspects of their lives. The quality has to be in how they stream media to how they order groceries, delivery, take-out, and even contactless dine-in.

McKinsey notes that even before COVID-19, 92 percent of companies thought their business models would need to change given digitalization. The new reality is to shift-digital or risk becoming irrelevant overnight.

Businesses that deprioritized digitalization now rush to shift-digital, are realizing the effort is daunting, and they need help. Businesses are making this transition with fewer resources and newly distributed teams, making the challenge much more difficult.

The typical digitally transformed brand has on average 28 applications, each with roughly 98 unique screens. These apps are required to be visible on an average of 5 screen sizes and 6 languages.

The varying sizes and languages amount to roughly 90,000 pages and screen variations that need to be visually perfect. 90,000 ways a company delivers the customer’s digital experience.

Traditional automated testing methods are slow and prone to false positives. Additionally, the design of these frameworks does not detect visual defects. Undetected visual defects detract from the seamless experience and can cost R&D teams between $1.75m and $6.9m annually to fix.

Visual AI to the Rescue.

Artificial intelligence and its use cases realize a growth trajectory that no one could have predicted. Visual AI is an example of how technology helps create an advanced approach to visual quality testing.

By replicating the human eye and brain, Visual AI is able to detect differences in a screenshot against a baseline image. This process is completed with incredible speed and accuracy and also creates a system that is becoming increasingly sophisticated as more businesses adopt it.

This technology is now so widespread that one Visual AI platform recently crossed over 1 billion images analyzed. With so many images analyzed for global companies, it’s hard to imagine someone who has not benefited from it.

The sheer amount of images analyzed also means  AI algorithms grow increasingly intelligent in identifying defects and eliminating false positives.

visual AI

How you have Benefitted from Visual AI (and didn’t even know it).

Visual AI positively impacts digital experiences for customers in many ways. It is a bit of an unsung hero, in that when it does its job – you don’t know it, you just enjoy the experience.

From popular day to day business apps to binge-watching your favorite show on a rainy weekend, AI is behind the scenes, improving quality.

E-COMMERCE

Many people spend a good amount of time putting together a curated grocery list for the week. When ordering online, you select your items, choose your delivery time, and proceed to check-out.

But at checkout, you cannot find the “Submit Order” button. There’s no way to buy what you want so you end up seeing if another grocery store has delivery available. Or worse, have to drive to the store’s physical location. This is a very real issue, one I have personally experienced. It’s incredibly frustrating, not only does it damage the grocers brand, but naturally impacts its revenue.

When ordering a new pair of noise-canceling headphones, a new phone, fresh new kicks, a Friday evening pizza delivery, or your weekly groceries, you are likely interacting with an application tested by Visual AI.

Forbes recently reported that the US and Canadian e-commerce orders are experiencing 129 percent YoY growth. Based on current trends, there is no slowing this train down.

eCommerce provides us a faster, safer, and oftentimes, lower-cost alternative to access the things we want. More importantly, the things we need. Visual AI ensures eCommerce platforms deliver on these promises.

ONLINE BANKING

It’s time to log-in to your banking portal to reconcile your account. You enter your username and password, but your password expired and needs to be changed. In going to change your password, you see the change password button isn’t working. You’re stuck mid-change as fear and anxiety are mount by the minute – sound familiar?

ConsumerAffairs notes that 8 in 10 Americans prefer banking digitally vs visiting a physical branch. The primary emotional connection is to make it easy for customers to use their products and services.

From cashing checks to auto bill pay and everything in between, Visual AI assists many global financial firms to test their mobile apps and web portals.

By testing with Visual AI, leading financial institutions can achieve primary emotional connection and ensure their customers have instant and easy access to their services.

STREAMING ENTERTAINMENT

You’re binge-watching your favorite show and the next episode auto-plays. Psych! It skipped ahead two episodes unveiling a spoiler in the recap. Thankfully, this is one of the reasons why popular streaming entertainment services use Visual AI.

When subscribers log in, they expect a fully immersive experience. Escaping bugs not only impacts that exact moment but can negatively alter the full streaming experience and harm the brand.

Streaming apps run on a large variety of devices including mobile phones, tablets and dedicated streaming devices. Streaming apps are also built into a countless number of televisions with different operating systems and software versions.

Visual AI technology captures screenshots from each of the platforms and divides the screenshots into visual elements. It then compares the extracted visual elements to compare against a baseline image. This process is all done in parallel and with incredible accuracy.

HEALTHCARE

You register for your healthcare provider app and schedule a doctor’s appointment. Ahead of the appointment, you get a notification and think, “nice touch.” Upon arriving at your doctor’s office you learn your doctor works from the other side of the city on Tuesdays. The app sent you to the wrong address.

As a result, this is now a missed appointment charge and seven phone calls to reverse that charge created. What a frustrating experience.

Healthcare services continue to evolve, especially since the recent pandemic. More providers offer in-home, virtual doctor consultations powered by web and mobile apps. These web portals and mobile apps create your health hub.

Patients get secure doctor communications, prescription refills, appointment scheduling, and find helpful wellness resources.

Leading care providers rely on Visual AI to ensure their member’s experiences work. Their customers now have quick and easy access to care and health information.

IoT and CONNECTED DEVICES

Your new smart car completes a software update and the music widget appears to have gone missing. It turns out it is hiding underneath another icon.

While not a critical issue, it makes you question the quality of the brand. Alexa – does Visual AI play some role in testing at least one of my household IoT devices? Odds are good that the answer is yes. IoT is everywhere.

In connected washing machines and dryers to home security equipment, blood pressure straps, smart cars, smart scales, smart rings, and smartwatches.

The list goes on and on. If an IoT device has a screen or an associated app, then Visual AI can test it.

Next time your smartwatch harasses you because you skipped a workout, you may have to thank Visual AI for reminding you.

AR/MR/VR

Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality offers immersive experiences. These experiences can alter the real-world environment, bring real-world environments into an augmented space, or allow a user to leave the real-world environment behind all-together.

When creating apps for this technology, engineers innovate in the manner in which they are developing. This requires a level of innovation on how such apps are tested. Some leaders in this tech space are looking towards Visual AI to help.

Therefore, testing this next generation of apps requires expertise across multiple scenarios including 2D, 3D, and 360 Video. AR/MR/VR apps of the future will enable fully immersive movies and concerts, corporate meetings, and even civil engagements.

These apps offer new experiences that demand the highest quality to ensure the user remains fully immersed. Visual AI is paving the way to tomorrow’s experiences, today.

GAMING CONSOLES

You spend countless hours on that “game ++” dual-sword build and accidentally hit the wrong button. Now it’s deleted forever. The confirmation dialog did not appear as expected and getting pissed off is the understatement of the year.

With billions of gamers worldwide, every home is likely to have a gaming console. Gaming consoles provide instant access to games, smart apps, and of course, streaming content services.

Today’s consoles have multiple apps within their user interface, each of which requires testing. For example, the online store might be one app, the settings interface might be another, and then you may have things like communities, messages, play parties, and the list goes on.

On top of that, think about language support. Most modern consoles need to support at least 30 different languages.

Testing this variety of apps across multiple languages is no small feat. It requires top-notch test architects and the help of Visual AI. So the next time you’re playing your favorite gaming console, remember that Visual AI played a part in your experience.

Conclusion

In all of the use cases listed above, there has been explosive growth with no sign of things slowing down. We’re living in a digital world and its advantages are so much more relevant in 2020 than before.

Digitalization is no longer a matter of convenience. It helps us reduce risk and ensure safety, especially with our most vulnerable populations.

Artificial intelligence ensures quality web and mobile customer experiences and the benefits are obvious and proven. Organizations are transforming their business to shift-digital and remain relevant so that we as customers are delighted.

While you may have never heard of Visual AI before today, the next time you sit down and stream your favorite show, play a game, order groceries online, or set up an online bill-pay — remember there is some amazing technology that helped some really smart people build those experiences for you.

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Daniel Levy
Senior Director at Applitools

Daniel Levy is a Senior Director at Applitools working remotely from his home in Portland, OR. Daniel has a passion for technology, a vision for product, and a story to tell. Outside of work, you’ll likely find him hiking, biking, behind a camera at sunrise, enjoying an espresso or craft beer, or gaming.

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