How to use ChatGPT to elevate design thinking as a designer
Can AI help me early in the design process?
Can AI assist with my design thinking along the way?
Today, I’ll walk through an example to use ChatGPT to enhance my design thinking process as I navigate through a product request.
The requirement
I asked ChatGPT to generate a simple product requirements document (PRD).
I used it as a hypothetical product request for my experiment.
Debrief the requirement
As a product designer, what should I do after receiving this document from the product manager (PM)?
Before diving deep into the document, I asked ChatGPT what questions I should ask the PM for clarification.
Here are the answers I received:
I may not literally ask those questions to the PM, but they were great for identifying gaps early on and enhancing my thinking.
For instance, consider question #3: Are there any aspects of the current app ecosystem I need to be aware of?
Instead of immediately diving into designing wireframes, I needed to understand the dependencies and limitations.
The response from ChatGPT would help inform my potential next steps:
- Review the Product Requirements Document (PRD) with the PM to understand the reasoning and expectations.
- Read other documents related to this new feature.
- Audit the existing user flows and discuss them with the PM.
- Gain insights from domain experts, such as engineers.
- Consider hosting a workshop with the right stakeholders present to review the current experience collaboratively, identifying gaps and opportunities.
- Possibly leverage existing user research or conduct new user studies for further insights.
It offered me more perspectives around how to approach this challenge.
Identify the problems
Let’s say I went through those steps, learned a lot from those activities, and took many notes.
Then I asked ChatGPT to summarize the business goals and the relevant user problems.
I included three key points in my prompt for ChatGPT:
- “top 10 user problems”
- “how might we”
- “categorize them based on themes”
I intentionally kept it broad.
Here is what I received:
The problem statements proved quite helpful for my thought process.
They were also grouped into categories, a structure that could aid in clarifying my thoughts and facilitating communication with the team by sharing these themes.
For instance, if the project is ambiguous and has dependencies, I could organize a meeting with the project manager and stakeholders to determine which theme we should prioritize in the upcoming phase.
Ideate the solutions
After gaining clarity on priorities, I could also consider hosting an ideation workshop with other designers.
Let’s say “User Onboarding and Education” and “Security and Trust” are the two themes we want to tackle first.
I pulled below text directly from the ChatGPT response earlier:
User Onboarding and Education:
- How might we make the payment setup process more intuitive and straightforward to enhance user adoption?
- How might we design an educational system within the app to highlight the benefits of using the app for rent payments?
Security and Trust:
- How might we reinforce the security measures in the app to build user trust in adding their payment methods?
- How might we transparently communicate our security practices to alleviate user concerns about data privacy?
Then I copied and pasted it directly into FigJam AI.
I asked it to create a whiteboard for my ideation workshop.
Great! Received this in seconds.
From here, I could continue using ChatGPT and other AI tools to assist me in the further design explorations.
Takeaways
From product requirements to design thinking, ChatGPT was my assistant.
- If I was overwhelmed with information, it could help me extract insights.
- If I was unsure how to connect the dots, it could clarify my thinking.
- If I was stuck for ideas, it could suggest other scenarios and offer inspiration.
- If I wanted to get the team’s input, I could use its responses to feed into other AI tools to create artifacts for me.
There is no set way to ask for help during the design thinking process, and I could tailor my requests to my needs.
How have you used AI to assist your design thinking?
What tools have you found helpful?
See you next time!
Xinran
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