Kubernetes and artificial intelligence may be changing the industry, but having an intuitive user experience for developers interfacing with these technologies is key to their implementation.

“As a [user experience] practitioner, the way that I look at it is … AI is just a technology. If you really want to make compelling software that changes the world, you have to think about, well what problems are the users trying to solve?” said Máirín Duffy (pictured), senior principal UX engineer at Red Hat Inc. “How can I infuse that preexisting app with AI to just supercharge it?”

Duffy spoke with theCUBE’s Rob Strechay and Savannah Peterson at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI is impacting the user experience and the importance of easing developers’ workload. (* Disclosure below.)

A user experience that works for the community

At Red Hat, engineers are trying to improve the user experience by decreasing complexity, as many developers find Kubernetes intimidating. However, drawing from the open source community for user experience can be hard, according to Duffy.

“You can’t practice UX in sort of a drive-by fashion,” she said. “It’s a little more difficult to get UX contributors to a project. You really have to nurture them and invest in them and try to keep them around for the long haul.”

Red Hat recently released the Podman Desktop 1.8, which allows developers to view Kubernetes objects from their local cluster. Since Kubernetes presents developers with immense amounts of data, part of simplifying the user experience is selecting which data they see.

“The job of a UX designer is to work with the developers,” Duffy said. “[If] this is all the data we have in the system, what should we present to the users at what time? It’s almost theatrical.”

Empowering the entire community of developers is crucial for Duffy, who worries that the amount of processing power required for AI might create an unequal power dynamic among users.

“The way that is structured right now with large models, you have to have a lot of resources,” she said. “I would love to see something … for AI where the end users who it is being foisted upon, have some say in some amount of control and power in that situation.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe:

(* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE