Genie: AI Design Thinking Catalyst
Overview
- Role
- UX Designer
- Period
- 2024
What I did
- Conducted user research to identify the pain points of non-designers in design thinking workshops
- Led the design of 'Genie' AI agent
- Conducted usability testing to evaluate the prototype's effectiveness
Problem
Introducing design thinking methods to non-design teams can be difficult due to unfamiliarity and potential hesitation during open ideation. Workshops risk lower engagement or output without effective scaffolding for new participants.
What I designed & built
Created the concept of 'Genie', a virtual participant in design thinking workshops. Genie automatically generates relevant ideas presented visually as post-it notes, catalyzing the ideation process.
Shipped outcome
The 'Genie' prototype successfully demonstrated the potential of AI as a creative catalyst and facilitator in collaborative workshops. It offered a novel method to lower the barrier for non-designers, boost initial idea generation, and showed promise for making design thinking more accessible and productive within diverse teams.
Learnings
- Prompt engineering techniques for generating contextually relevant workshop ideas from LLMs.
- Designing the interactions to seamlessly integrate AI into physical whiteboard.
- The potential for AI to augment, not replace, human creativity in collaborative processes.
Next steps
- Refine the AI model for more diverse and nuanced idea generation.
- Integrate 'Genie' with existing digital whiteboard platforms (e.g., Mural, FigJam).
- Conduct further testing in real-world workshops with non-designer teams.
- Explore different AI agent personas and roles within a workshop.