Happy Monday y’all! Let’s get right into it, today’s AIxDesign sandwich is made of —

• 🥪 (sandwich bread)

• 🍅 All design-automating-AI-tools are designing brainlessly! (tomatoes that nobody likes)

• 🥒 AIverse updates (didn’t want but tasty pickle)

• 🍗 Experiment: Co-creating with AI (double dose of protein patty)

• 🥜 Meme of the day (the real carbs source)

• 🥪 (sandwich bread)

A weird sandwich, I agree!

Today’s edition is going to be a little design heavy *FOMO starts sneaking up*, but that’s what we do, bounce between AI and Design! In case you missed last time’s, the AI heavy edition, a reader commented “it’s the best she’d read so far”

*FOMO intensifies*

I think about Design, AI, and how both can work together in the future almost 24×7. Not going to lie, it’s fascinating, and feels like work play, which is why I have a lot of consumed data floating around in my head. Writing is a way for me connect the dots, forming theories.

Those (biased) theories is what I publish to the world to read.

You could say I’m a transformer seeking attention (real meta huh?). Oh wait, but AI is the one trying to be us, not the other way around. So AI is a content writer seeking attention? Is that what an LLM is?

Oh wait…oh wait…*brain fart*

Before I get derailed, one such theory that I’ve had on my mind for some time is

All design-automating-AI-tools are designing brainlessly!

Let me rant elaborate.

If you’ve been designing for some years, you’d know designing isn’t just creating pixels, irrespective of whether you’re a UI designer or a UX designer. It’s so much more.

Sometimes, it’s just pressing Option/Alt + Shift + Right arrow key to make the rectangles perfectly aligned.

Sometimes, it’s just sitting on the desk, looking outside the window and just marinating on what your user, Sam, said “I don’t want to have to click three times to find the information I need”

Sometimes, it’s just staring into white space…

My point being that we, as innovators, we consume, we think, we create, we originate, we test, we repeat.

We don’t start with a blurry image of an unoriginal work, we start with the users.

It’s like going into someone else’s Figma files..even if they’ve done great work, I don’t gain an intuitive understanding of their users.

We connect dots; ideas, user needs, scenarios, to form original designs.

But AI doesn’t really do that…

• No empathy; understanding user frustrations

• No contextual understanding

• No indirect-feedback integration

• No inclusive designs; ethical and accessible

The recent tools that have been coming up, for example Galileo, don’t seem to take into account the importance of the human factor.

There’s no one solution that fits all, but design-automating-AI-tools seem to think one solution does fit all.

Now, I’m not against the AI tools, in fact I want them to win but I think the marketing of the tools, as is currently, is too ambitious.

Converting text input prompt to a UI design has multiple problems —

• Unless the input specifies, AI doesn’t know the context

• Unless the input specifies, AI doesn’t know the scenario

• Unless the input specifies, AI doesn’t know the user needs

• Unless the input specifies, AI doesn’t know the pain points

• Unless the input specifies, AI doesn’t know the constraints

It’s very input (prompt) dependent, which we know isn’t the future.

But one thing AI tools do REALLY well, is generating ideas!

• Creativity; combining multiple solutions to come up with more ideas!

  • Patterns exploration

  • Different user POVs

  • Fusing various existing interactions

Because of the vast amount of data it has, they can generate ideas, not novel, by combining multiple things whether it be iterations or features or even give various user perspectives.

Do you remember the Netflix Design case study from the previous Voyager edition? No worries if not, here were the mind blowing conclusions —

• Using AI to automate the existing design tasks is actually limiting the potential of AIxDesign!

• AIxDesign will change the design process.

• The new practice of design is to delegate detailed design choices to the algorithms.

• We can now create specific solutions for individual users, not just personas!

This is the long-term view of design. In order to design with & for AI, we must change the whole design process itself (which is being researched upon). But I believe, we can still use the power of AI in the traditional double-diamond process.

*static noise*

Sorry to interrupt, but we just got a word from the HQ...

we have info that there have been minor updates on the AIxDesign platform!

🔮 Mini AI-UX guide - Speak the language, updated! Becoming an AIxDesigner, learning and upskilling gets easier.

Keep checking the website, updates coming in faster than I can click the publish button!

*static noise*

I have a theory I want to test — exclusively with the people aboard the Voyager, you all!

Experiment: Co-creating with AI as a designer or an innovator

Over the past month, I’ve been working on an ideation design tool which can help designers NOT automatically create the designs, but co-create with them, that is, act as an assistant designer.

What is it? What can it do? How does it work?

Let’s say you had an assistant designer, what would they do?

• Get me a double espresso shot without milk

• Give me a list of all possible patterns we can use. (Assisant: browses through Google Images or Dribbble to find patterns)

• Give me a list of all the different types of people using the application.

• Give me a list of all personas.

• Give me list of all scenarios of the app.

• Give me a list of limitations.

• Give me a list of all possible design states.

• Give me a list of all gamification features for the app.

• and so on..

One common thing?

They’re all divergent tasks, that is, ways of brainstorming to design an all-rounded solution.

and we know AI is exceptional at divergent tasks!

So I did something amazing…

I went through my own design process,

• listed the various points where I’ve needed to brainstorm,

• used ChatGPT4 to help me brainstorm,

• converted the random chats into perfected prompts + examples,

• built an app to remove the effort of prompting,

• created individual brainstorming techniques powered by AI,

• and voila!

Ideator.design, a suite of 7 brainstorming techniques for designers powered by GPT4. It can —

• Create iterations; variations of an interaction (text, not images yet)

• Reimagine patterns; innovative ways of standard UX patterns,

• Constructs user flows; interaction flows for specific user tasks,

• Evaluate from different POVs,

• Combine features with your app to form novel concepts,

• Describe real-world user stories for your product,

• Impose constraints to think outside the box

Ideator.design isn’t meant to replace designers, but it’s an experiment to show how we, the designers, can use AI to brainstorm and come up with solutions faster!

• We’re still doing the work,

• We’re still connecting the dots,

• But we can get the dots faster and more varied through AI.

I want you to give it shot and see if it helps you as intended,

to answer the bigger question — does AI actually work? Is it the future?

Hoping we can answer these questions together!

Current limitations of Ideator.design 

• Contextual ideation

• Pending test of AI-UX laws

• A little slow on initial load

• and my bank balance.. 👀 

You can reply to this email for any comments or feedback :)

🤣 Meme of the day

*BONUS* Not a meme but this is just cool!