HCI with AI: Enhancing the Design Process with AI

AI Tools in Your Design Process

Although my team did not use AI tools directly in building the tutorial application, we actively used ChatGPT as a reference during the planning stages of the design process. We used it as a brainstorming tool to help generate different interface ideas, review sample user flows, and better understand usability principles. For example, when exploring how to design a more flexible user experience, we asked ChatGPT how to support users who might not want to customize every step of the tutorial. ChatGPT suggested using predefined templates. This is an idea that can simplify the user journey, while still allowing personalization options. We also used ChatGPT to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of various tutorial formats, including text-based, mixed text-and-visual, and video formats.

In addition, we used ChatGPT to enhance our understanding of user-centered design. It helped us review design heuristics, such as Nielsen’s principles, which we used to validate our tutorial structure choices early on. While we did not use AI tools to create visual wireframes, we described screen flows in text and asked for feedback on certain elements like button placement and navigation clarity. These insights helped us catch potential design issues before we started wireframing. Overall, the use of AI tools sped up our research process by offering helpful suggestions tailored to our design goals.

AI Hacks to Improve Your Design

Though we did not apply AI directly within the development process of our tutorial application, we did use it to build upon a key project requirement. One of the necessary steps was to conduct one-to-one interviews with at least three users. These interviews aimed to identify the problems with existing tutorial applications, present our own proposal, gather feedback on our design, and make improvements accordingly. The interviews provided valuable insights into different user expectations, challenges, and needs, in order to develop a better tutorial application. To enhance this step, we decided to use ChatGPT to simulate an additional user interview. This allowed us to expand our understanding by exploring a wider range of perspectives and uncovering potential changes that were not revealed in the original interviews. This also helped us consider adding certain accessibility and ease-of-use features, such as colored sliders to adjust tutorial features early in the design phase. This leads to more refined wireframes before development began. Another particularly useful application was using AI to generate heuristic evaluation criteria, which we used to assess the usability of our design. While AI was not part of our workflow, it played a meaningful supporting role in guiding our transition from ideation to development, in order to align our design with established usability principles.

Personal Insights on AI in the Design Process

In my personal view, AI holds tremendous potential as a support tool in the design process. While our group chose not to use it directly in our tutorial application, I see AI as a valuable brainstorming tool, rather than a replacement for genuine design thinking. AI can enhance user-centered design by accelerating research, offering diverse perspectives, and suggesting design improvements, but it does not replace the human understanding of user emotions. AI lacks the empathy that comes from real human experiences, and I believe designers must carefully assess AI-generated outputs. AI-generated outputs must be tested and compared against actual user feedback to ensure they truly address user needs before implementation. Looking ahead, I do believe AI will become central in areas like UX research and user usability testing, but its role should remain supporting, not dominant.

The increasing integration of AI into design workflows also brings ethical responsibilities. Designers need to remain aware of potential biases in AI outputs and ensure that accessibility and inclusivity are not absent or compromised. As AI tools evolve, our role as designers will be to guide and refine their use and most importantly, keep the human perspective at the core of the design process.

AI and Design: The Balance of Human and Machine

Bringing AI into the HCI design process definitely opens up possibilities and challenges. On the positive side, AI can make certain tasks much faster, such as brainstorming rough drafts of screen layouts or researching what similar applications are doing. But at the same time, relying too heavily on AI can lead to a lack of creative ideas and overlook the aspects of the tutorial application that users truly value, such as visual style. In my group's project, we tried to keep that balance by using AI more like a helpful reference point rather than a decision maker. We evaluated its suggestions and always made sure they aligned with what we knew about our users and how they learn best.

I think it is important for designers to use AI as a reference, not a replacement. It is great for overcoming challenges or gaining new perspectives, but we still need to test those ideas with real users to ensure they truly work. We also noticed that AI tools can sometimes create disconnects in group work, especially when team members use different AI tools without sharing what they are doing. But when everyone is open about how they are using AI tools and brings those ideas together, it actually brings the team closer. When used right, AI tools can boost creativity without losing the human-centered approach to design.