AIX Design: Ideate

During the Ideation phase, the goal was to begin developing design decisions based on what we discovered users needed most during our research. We started this stage by conducting a creative matrix activity, where we answered “How Might We…” questions with ideas for how design could solve the identified problems. My team and I each generated responses for every question. Once we finished, we reviewed all of the sticky notes and stamped the ones we thought were strong ideas. The notes that received two or more stamps were considered the most successful, and those were the solutions I plan to explore further. After completing the creative matrix, my team and I split up and began working independently for the remainder of the project. I continued the ideation phase by creating a storyboard to better understand how our user personas might use the app and how it would make them feel while interacting with it. I also developed a user flow diagram using the most successful design ideas we selected in our creative matrix to help guide the layout of the app. These steps helped me better understand how my version of the app would be presented to users and how the interactions within it would function.

One thing that was especially helpful during this stage was using the AI features in Figma to organize the sticky notes from the creative matrix. It automatically grouped the notes by theme and also sorted them based on the number of stamps they received. This made it much easier to identify what ideas were related and which ones seemed to be the strongest solutions. I also used ChatGPT to assist me during this phase. By sharing information about my personas, ChatGPT helped me develop a narrative for my storyboard and also helped me think through how my user flow diagram might work. The tool generated ideas that I had not initially considered and encouraged me to expand on concepts based on some of its suggestions.

I found that the user flow diagram was the most challenging part of this stage. Similar to the sitemap we created for our Visual Communication website last semester, once you understand it, a user flow can provide a lot of clarity for the designer when planning how an app will function and how the structure should be built. However, the user flow diagram feels much more complex than the sitemap was. I struggled to fully visualize how the app should be laid out and how all of the interactions would connect. ChatGPT helped me better understand the sequence of steps users would take and how the app could be structured successfully, which was very helpful. Even so, it still feels like there may be additional steps or interactions that I might be missing in the user flow diagram.

Reflecting on the ideation stage of this project, I really enjoyed finally being able to start making design decisions. The most exciting part of being a designer is actually designing, and although I am not fully at that stage yet, this phase helped me realize how important research and answering key design questions are. If I had jumped straight into designing without understanding my users’ needs or knowing what features the app should include, I would have felt very lost, and it would have taken much longer to figure out everything that needed to be added. If I could change one thing about this phase, it would be to generate even more design ideas during the creative matrix activity. I came up with a good number of ideas, and my teammates’ ideas were also very helpful, but I think spending more time brainstorming could have led to even more creative solutions. I also think I could have used AI more during the creative matrix stage. It might have helped me come up with additional ideas or allowed me to build on suggestions that AI generated. Overall, using AI during this phase was very helpful. It expanded my thinking, provided useful input for certain design decisions, and helped me better understand some parts of the ideation process.