{"id":273,"date":"2026-02-15T05:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T05:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/?p=273"},"modified":"2026-02-15T05:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T05:36:26","slug":"aix-design-empathize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/2026\/02\/15\/aix-design-empathize\/","title":{"rendered":"AIX Design: Empathize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The&nbsp;objective&nbsp;in this stage of the design thinking process was to explore potential design challenges faced by college students and young adults in managing busy schedules. Specifically, the goal was to understand how current scheduling tools meet or&nbsp;fail to&nbsp;meet their needs, with an emphasis on creating a personalized AI-driven app that helps users balance their time for sleep, socializing, and other activities. The interview we conducted&nbsp;provided&nbsp;valuable insights&nbsp;on&nbsp;the frustrations and gaps in existing tools, such as the lack of alarms.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this process,&nbsp;my team and I&nbsp;used a generative AI&nbsp;ChatGPT&nbsp;tool to analyze the interview&nbsp;transcripts,&nbsp;and we then created&nbsp;empathy maps that captured the user\u2019s feelings&nbsp;and thoughts&nbsp;points. This helped focus the design on features like customizable alerts and&nbsp;flexible&nbsp;rescheduling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The benefits of using AI in this stage were&nbsp;clear;&nbsp;it accelerated the analysis&nbsp;of&nbsp;data.AI helped synthesize user feedback quickly and offered fresh perspectives.&nbsp;However, challenges included ensuring the AI\u2019s outputs were relevant and aligned with the specific user context.&nbsp;We also interviewed&nbsp;AI and&nbsp;reflected&nbsp;on AI\u2019s role. It&nbsp;served&nbsp;as a powerful assistant in the early design phase, complementing human insights rather than replacing them. This&nbsp;involved the AI handling data processing and idea generation, while I focused on context to understand, user empathy, and decision-making. This collaboration enabled a more efficient and informed design process.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the interview, it was clear that users rely on digital calendars but find them lacking in critical areas. For instance, the user mentioned using their phone calendar but complained about the lack of sound alerts, making it easy to miss scheduled events. They also described feeling overwhelmed when their schedule was packed with classes but&nbsp;did not&nbsp;include essential activities like eating or sleeping. Current tools also&nbsp;failed to&nbsp;accommodate last-minute changes, leaving users frustrated and unprepared.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, this stage highlighted the importance of building a scheduling app that not only tracks events but also proactively supports users\u2019 well-being and social needs. Incorporating AI to provide reminders, flexible rescheduling, and personalized lifestyle planning, while&nbsp;also&nbsp;catering to shared&nbsp;schedules with the users to make planning with&nbsp;friends&nbsp;more&nbsp;efficient,&nbsp;can significantly improve how young adults manage their busy lives.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The&nbsp;objective&nbsp;in this stage of the design thinking process was to explore potential design challenges faced by college students and young adults in managing busy schedules. Specifically, the goal was to understand how current scheduling tools meet or&nbsp;fail to&nbsp;meet their needs, with an emphasis on creating a personalized AI-driven app that helps users balance their time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sova.ourcloud.ou.edu\/jthompson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}