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Today I’ll be talking through my prototype for design and research this term. My current research is exploring AI in UX design – asking how can UX designers use AI to streamline and improve their work, as well as finding where AI can’t do the job, due to gaps of knowledge in the source material, or other shortcomings of the software.
For my prototype this semester, I decided to begin the UX design process with an app I had previously created, but this time using as many AI programs as possible. For now, we are specifically looking at user research and persona development.
The app I am working with is called “ProspHER”, which is a job-seeking platform for underprivileged women. The app can be used to find work that fits your experience and skill level, as well as your availability. It specifically highlights unconventional working hours for maximum flexibility when considering caring for children or elderly family members, work that is often undertaken by women.
For my user research, I worked with three scholarly articles on various topics surrounding women’s employment. I ran these articles through an AI PDF reader, and could then ask the AI further questions about the articles.
After conducting this simulated user research, I used an AI tool to generate a persona based off a short description of my app concept. The original persona was surprisingly helpful, and then I added information from my user research to fill it out more.
Important things to highlight in this process are that these AI tools only work well if you know how to use them – meaning that you need to know what questions to ask and how to ask them. You also need to keep in mind, with all AI tools, that these programs are simply remixing information and images that already exist somewhere. This means that our biases are inherently baked in to the results, and need to be watched for with a very careful eye.
In the next semester, I am excited to get deeper into existing literature on AI. I want to see what has already been done to implement AI into the UX profession on an official basis, and to continue experimenting with how much AI I can involve in the UX process.
