As a UX Designer, incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into your workflow can revolutionize the way you approach discovery, research, and design. AI offers the potential to automate mundane tasks, streamline processes, and provide fresh insights that designers may overlook.
At Ingage Partners, we're at the forefront of exploring AI's applications to improve how we work. We're engaging in conversations and experimenting with AI tools across our various service offerings, including UX research and design, application development, test automation, quality assurance, process improvement, and agile project management.
In my recent experiments, I delved into the intersection of AI and user experience research and design. To provide context, I created a fictitious B-Corp t-shirt company and leveraged AI tools such as Chat GPT, Midjourney, and Uizard.
Creating a Business Plan
While this isn’t really a UX focus area, I needed to establish the key components of a solid business plan to give context to the product I would be designing. By prompting Chat GPT with the question, "What are the key components of a good business plan?" I received a good list of categories including Executive Summary, Business Description, Market Analysis, and Marketing and Sales Strategy. To explore different format options, I prompted Chat GPT for alternative business plan formats like lean canvas, pitch deck, strategic plan, operational plan, and business model canvas.
I then used one of the formats to prompt Chat GPT for a business plan. It quickly generated a business plan tailored to my t-shirt company, taking into account its environmentally friendly materials, B-Corp certification, community-focused revenue allocation, and sales strategy encompassing both local businesses and online platforms like Shopify.
Market Research Plan
While market research is also not strictly a UX responsibility, I thought that having this established could help frame the content and design, differentiating my t-shirt company from local and online competition. I utilized Chat GPT to devise a Market Research Plan for my t-shirt company upstart, saving time that would have been spent manually creating a research plan.
Information Architecture
I asked Chat GPT for an information architecture for my T-shirt eCommerce website and was quickly provided with a list of key sections like Home, Shop, Men's T-Shirts, Women's T-Shirts, and more. These results significantly expedited the information architecture step in the website design process.
Sample Page Content
To enhance the company's online presence, I asked Chat GPT to generate sample content for the About page. The resulting content exemplified the company's mission and commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. Often when you’re designing, you don’t have all of the content and need to use filler content. This approach resolved that problem.
Personas
Understanding the user is crucial, so I requested a few personas focused on sustainability-minded individuals interested in B-Corp t-shirt companies. One persona, Emma, is a 32-year-old marketing professional deeply passionate about sustainability, seeking ethical fashion choices, transparency, education, and a sense of community. These ad hoc personas could serve as a foundation for user research.
User Research
To move into user research, I asked Chat GPT to generate a user interview script based on the personas. While the script needed refinement, it provided a solid starting point for gathering insights into users' needs, motivations, and behaviors.
Design Sprint Agenda
Lastly, I explored how Chat GPT could assist in creating a 3-day Design Sprint schedule for my t-shirt company's goal of developing an eCommerce website. With time boxes for each activity, starting at 9 am and ending at 5 pm, the schedule facilitated efficient planning and collaboration.
Conclusion
Utilizing AI tools significantly expedited various tasks, saving time and effort. Most tasks took under a minute to get results. It's important to note that the generated results still require refinement and validation. Results occasionally needed to be regenerated for different results and perspectives, or refinement. Chat GPT served as a valuable resource, eliminating the need to create everything from scratch or sifting through numerous searches and websites.
By utilizing AI-powered tools like Chat GPT, processes can be streamlined, tasks can be automated, and new insights can be gained.
Embracing the B-Corp spirit of prioritizing people, AI can complement human-centered design by expediting tasks like website architecture, ad hoc persona creation, content generation, and workshop scheduling. While AI accelerates progress, it’s important to remember that human creativity and empathy remain paramount. At Ingage we continue to research the relationship between AI and human expertise, always with the goal of creating exceptional user experiences that focus on the needs of our audience.
In my upcoming article, we'll dive into the visual artifacts AI created for my fictitious t-shirt company, exploring new AI possibilities in the design process. Stay tuned!
