The objective of the Ideate stage was to generate a wide range of potential solutions of design opportunities our team identified in the Define stage. Specifically, we wanted to explore ideas that could help students manage their workload more effectively, reduce stress related to deadlines, protect time for rest and meals, and make it easier to coordinate schedules with others. Instead of immediately focusing on a single solution, the goal of this stage was to diverge and explore multiple possibilities. Our team used How Might We (HMW) questions and a Creative Matrix to organize ideas and ensure that each design opportunity was explored from multiple perspectives. We then each created storyboards to visually describe the scenario shown in the storyboard and explain how a user interacts with the proposed design solution step-by-step. Connecting the design idea to a realistic situation so readers can understand how the product would be used and how it solves the user’s problem.

AI Usage

During the ideation process, we used ChatGPT tool to assist with brainstorming and organizing ideas. The tool helped expand on early concepts, generate additional solutions, and organizing our brainstorming rto be clearer. AI was mainly used to support creative thinking and ensure that we explored a broad range of possible features for our design concept.

Example Prompt 1

Prompt:
“Generate several ideas for the question: How might we help students see their workload in a way that feels manageable?”

AI Output:

• A visual dashboard showing daily, weekly, and monthly tasks
• Color-coded task categories based on urgency or type
• Progress tracking bars that show how much work has been completed
• A feature that breaks large assignments into smaller subtasks
• Visual alerts for upcoming deadlines

These ideas helped inspire some of the features we later included in our Creative Matrix, such as color-coded tasks, different calendar views, and progress indicators.

Example Prompt 2

Prompt:
“Brainstorm features for a productivity app that helps students stop procrastinating.”

AI Output:

• Reminder notifications before deadlines
• Gamified reward systems for completing tasks
• Progress trackers for long-term assignments
• Encouraging messages when tasks are completed
• Daily summaries showing accomplishments

This helped our team think about motivation and behavioral design, which influenced ideas such as reward systems, positive reinforcement, and task progress tracking.

Benefits Realized

Using AI during the ideation process provided multiple benefits. It saved time by quickly generating multiple ideas that could be discussed and refined by the team. It also expanded the range of possible solutions by suggesting ideas that we might not have immediately considered. Another benefit was that AI helped structure and organize ideas, making it easier to turn our original brainstorming into a clear Creative Matrix that we could present and analyze.

Challenges

One challenge of using AI was that some of the generated ideas were very general or repetitive. Many productivity apps already use similar features such as reminders or task lists, so it required additional effort from the team to refine those ideas and make them more specific to our users problem. Another challenge was that AI sometimes produced too many ideas at once, which made it necessary to select the ones that were most relevant to our design goals.

Reflection

Overall, using AI during the ideation stage was helpful for generating ideas quickly and supporting the brainstorming process. However, I realized that AI works best as a creative assistant. The most useful ideas came from combining AI-generated suggestions with the perspectives and experiences of our team members.

If I were to repeat this process, I would use AI more strategically by writing more specific prompts related to user needs and constraints. This could help generate ideas that are more targeted to our specific users. AI tools could be improved by providing more context-aware suggestions that are tailored to specific design challenges instead of producing broad productivity ideas. Overall, AI was a valuable tool that helped expand our ideation process and supported our exploration of potential solutions.