Many times, UX designers have felt stuck for hours trying to research and navigate to a perfect approach that would be a custom fit into the context that we are working on, leaving us staring at a blank screen, or just pacing around trying to look in each corner of our brain.<\/p>\n
Lets dive into the Smart Ideation Framework!<\/p>\n
Now, imagine having a creative partner by your side, one that suggests, critiques, and even borrows ideas from other industries at lightning speed. With AI stepping up from an assistant to a collaborator, this is the proposed Smart Ideation Framework in action. This entails<\/p>\n
The Smart Ideation Framework is a way of looking at what can be achieved, improved and enhanced by\u00a0 transforming AI into a partner for strategy and innovation rather than just an assistant for basic everyday chores, such as drafting emails, paraphrasing UX copies, etc. We are now talking about leveraging AI rather than just using AI tools.<\/p>\n
Let me further illustrate this with an example – Suppose you are\u00a0 working on a mobile banking app. Instead of just asking an AI tool to generate user flows, you ask the AI, \u201cHow do other industries onboard anxious users?\u201d With this slight change in the intent of the question, produces a response with onboarding tricks from healthcare or fitness.<\/p>\n
This points to the evolution of usage of AI,\u00a0 meant to be explored and leveraged in ways that align problem solving with diverse as well as filtered responses, all this while cutting down the research and reference finding time, substantially.<\/p>\n
Example: While working on error messages for one of the clients, for an HRMS platform, I felt stuck in striking the balance between urgency of the notification, while keeping it soft and not making it feel forceful to the users. I asked Claude for softer approaches borrowed from a hospitality website. This instantly turned my warning like messages to a kinder and more empathetic push for the user.<\/li>\n
Anecdote: As a product designer I was once intrigued by the questione: \u201cHow do chefs guide diners through a tasting menu?\u201d With the help of AI, this question inspired a CRM product\u2019s new feature tour, making onboarding feel more like exploration than instruction.<\/li>\n
Example: Rather than choosing the first onboarding flow, AI helped me rapidly generate and compare three paths: one focused on speed, one on visual storytelling, and one that made a long multi step setup a breeze to get through! This helped me broaden the client’s understanding, and the final design evolved to be a mix of the best elements from all three.<\/li>\n
Anecdote: During a brainstorming session for a new product’s feature offerings (without any testing data available), the AI tool we were exploring \u201cchallenged\u201d our team\u2019s assumptions about what features users would care about most. This made us realise that we were discussing in loops, on the basis of internal biases, not real user pain points. Gaining this clarity prompted us for a new round of user interviews with targeted directions to gain specific insights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Through multiple ideation and discussion sessions with the fellow designers, trying to optimise workflows with best suited AI tools. We experimented and tested out multiple tools and agents that could be leveraged at different stages of the Design Process. While reviewing the responses from these tools, we found a common pattern that identified what AI did better than us humans and also where it fell short!
\nDrawing from this experimentation and also from available information online, a few things stood out – strengths and limitations of our AI buddy.<\/p>\n
Something I learned about getting AI to work, beyond prompt engineering!<\/p>\n
Here are some practical implementation tips to follow the Smart Ideation Framework<\/p>\n
Always interrogate AI suggestions with simple, direct questions:<\/p>\n
Picture this: A team working on a next-gen wearable is stuck. The designer asks AI, \u201cWhat can we learn from the hospitality sector about making guests feel at home?\u201d In minutes, they’re applying hotel welcome rituals to onboarding, elevating the product\u2019s warmth and distinctiveness. That\u2019s the Smart Ideation Framework at its best, a constant, collaborative push for more human (and humane) experiences.<\/p>\n
In one of my projects, 20\/20 Insights, Gen AI\u00a0 helped me analyse feedback trends to help me design for users, a better approach to setting goals . Some time in the previous month, an engineering manager discovered a communication gap in quarterly reviews.<\/p>\n
When we think of AI now, we need to visualize it as more than just a tool, but a creative buddy, one who is\u00a0 always there, ready to brainstorm (without having to look at it’s calendar), and most importantly is always ready to drive the design decisions and push us toward smarter, more empathetic and context appropriate UX solutions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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