How to use AI in UX & Product Design

Rachael Page

How AI is impacting creative roles in tech?

Apparently the kind of AI we currently have is Narrow/weak AI and not truly human-like intelligence. Strong or super intelligent AI remains theoretical, so I think AI is currently over-hyped and even misleading.

I don’t know enough about AI Research & Development to see into the future of AI in creative roles, however from my perspective, AI that generates text and images based on text prompts are just tools which we can use to enhance our creative endeavours and achieve things more efficiently.

Apparently when Photoshop came out, many photographers, and Artists felt threatened, but now Photoshop is a well accepted tool, and of great benefit to our creativity.

There are many areas of my job which are very hard to imagine could be replaced by AI at this point. These are things like coming up with product concepts, making business decisions, knowing what looks good and what needs more work - divergent and critical thinking essentially which would require strong or super intelligent AI.

There’s a hilarious meme that goes something like “If creative jobs are going to be replaced by AI, clients will need to accurately describe what they want - Our jobs are safe! - and I totally concur. Creatives know so well that a huge part of the job is extracting info from and managing clients (or managers) requests and expectations.

I think of AI, as having a personal assistant, who can make certain repetitive work more easily achieved. Some of the things I use AI for, now on a daily basis, are things like:

  • Generate a set of images for a client, for a ‘look and feel’ or mood board or concept visualisations
  • Make a list of business names, or headlines or calls to action.
  • Check for gaps in something like a list of possible solutions
  • Create an image for a social post, which can take a few seconds, but greatly improve the interest level.
  • Write a list of tasks to achieve a certain goal (a project plan)
  • Fact checking and finding data e.g. app store rules for submission of apps
  • Research e.g. list the top apps for drawing
  • Find a definition
  • Write an article or script, or the outline of a book or course

We use tools to do the repetitive work so that we spend much more time on the important work. For example, the other day I wrote a lesson on UI kits and used AI to research some statistics:

“UI kits speed up your workflow

On average, utilising UI kits can save designers approximately 50-75% of the time typically spent on designing user interfaces from scratch. This significant time-saving aspect allows designers to focus more on creativity and problem-solving rather than repetitive tasks”

Personally I find that I can waste a lot of time reading about AI tools and learning how to use them, so I have to be very selective and not an early adopter. I find that I need to train myself to notice when a job is taking too long and question whether I could find a way to do it faster and/or better.

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