Episode 5: Brainstorming with AI 💡🪄

Welcome back to the AI Goodies community! 👋 

In this episode, I cover how we can use AI for brainstorming at different stages across the design process. I will offer tips and tricks on using it, highlight aspects to be wary of when brainstorming with AI and some cool AI tools to use in your process.

It seems like there’s an AI tool for everything these days. 🙈 

🌪️ Brainstorming: one of the best use cases of AI

Frustrating creative blocks in which you can’t get yourself to make progress are something we’ve all experienced. AI can give us a helping hand in overcoming the cold-start problem or help us move from one friction point to another more smoothly through a conversational inspiration boost.

🖌️ The UX process: When can you brainstorm with AI?

Brainstorming, ideation and generally challenging our thoughts, ideas and angles over a problem are things that we continuously do throughout the design process. Some of the areas in which AI can act as a co-partner for bouncing ideas are:

• Understanding the market: brainstorming key behavioural patterns in a local market, surfacing stats, studies, opinions also

• Competitive analysis: finding the key competitors and what their unique proposition is, brainstorming opportunities in the gaps

• Brainstorm design questions that will help you in your actual user research. Prompt properly is key here (research goal, constraints, context - the more details, the better)

• Product solutions to user needs: AI can be a great tool to help us brainstorm product ideas for well-defined user needs, try asking ChatGPT “What are some ideas for a product (mobile app) that could address the following user needs:…”. Again, the level of detail can make a difference.

• Translate product ideas into features: Ask AI to generate product features based on an idea you might have, ask GPT: “How would these ideas translate into product features?”

🔥 How to brainstorm better with AI? Tips & Tricks

1. Be always clear about your brainstorming GOAL and what you want to achieve. If you want to learn more about how to write good prompts check out Google’s recommendations for how to prompt.

2. Offer more context: Offer as many details about your market, user or any contextual information you might have discovered from previous research. The more context we offer AI, the more relevant the responses will be.

3. Cluster & Prioritise your ideas: Add all the ideas generated onto a Miro board & cluster them based on common themes & rank them based on their importance.

4. Double check AI-generated info: Always double check with real users the ideas AI might generate. We know it might hallucinate at some points, so it is for the best to always double check.

⚠️ What to be careful about

AI could be one of the greatest revolutions since the internet, but we need not forget a key aspect (which is also a key value of UX):

We can have a lot of fun with our new brainstorming partner, the AI agent. However, design will still involve multidisciplinary efforts, with multiple people coming together to solve complex problems by using diverse perspectives, different angles, and a variety of contributions.

Design is conversation. Design is collaboration.

📝 Top tools for Brainstorming

1. ChatGPT & Gemini: The best tools to use for the points I made above. These powerful language models can assist with generating creative ideas, content and by offering contextual information can provide very relevant ideas. It doesn’t have to get more complicated than this.

2. HyperWrite: You can provide this tool with the problem you’re solving and it will generate a range of solutions and ideas.

3. ValueProp.Dev: An AI-powered tool that creates a Value Proposition Canvas for your company based on its description.

4. Stormz: An AI platform that allows you to create various brainstorming activities for effective idea generation and problem-solving.

5. Grammarly AI Brainstorming tool: it has a specific tool created to help you brainstorm ideas for your business, personal and educational needs. Gotta love the UX of this tool! ♥️

6. Brainstorm Buddy is a tool from the AI board of Innovation, a platform where you can find an AI tool for each stage in the design process

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✨ Relevant articles

💜 Next on AI Goodies: Episode 6 - Patterns in AI

This has to be my favourite topic in AI x Design right now, so I’m super excited about this issue. There’s so much ambiguity and opportunity in this space right now and we can massively contribute to shaping the foundation of how we will interact with AI in the future. Tune in! ⚡️

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AI & Design Love, Ioana ♥️