Finding a voice for AI

February 25, 2022

Premise

In this project given in the Flatiron School product design program, I was assigned to create the user experience for a company specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) content creation. The company is seeking to create a progressive web app using this AI capability, targeting users working in content creation, marketing, and product management.

Deliverables

goal-based persona based on user interviews
high-fidelity designs for version 1
speculative fiction scenarios

Timeline

This project is to be done in two sprints over the course of 3 weeks, culminating in a presentation to peers.

Research

I started by performing domain research and a visual competitive analysis to understand similar products in the market. Among 5 companies offering similar services, all used a clean and energetic blue or blue/orange color theme and clear sans serif type.

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To better understand the needs of users, I reached out to my network and interviewed three friends working in content creation.

Mark, Lexie, and Devan expressed their passion for representing brands, and their struggles using social media platforms and generating valuable content.

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Simultaneously, I performed more research on the characteristics and responsibilities of a social media manager in the field.

Synthesis

I synthesized each interview into a selection of relevant concepts. Using these snippets, I mapped affinities between all three interviews and distilled each affinity into a shared concept.

I selected the most important and actionable concepts and used them to create a first problem statement. For every problem statement, I ask “Why?” in a process I call the “Why axis”. This helps me distill the problem to its most essential parts while not losing sight of the specific context in which the problem is occurring.

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By asking “why?” I narrowed down the problem to a two-part statement, framing the issue within content creation but discovering that the true problem lies within the experience of brand audiences.

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Ideation

Using this defined problem statement, I started exploring possible ways to design a meaningful product. By asking “How might we...?” we can reframe the problem to shed light on new solutions. I focused on two questions...

How might we make the process of content creation more like the process of UX design?
How might we empower audiences to tell brands and content creators what they want to see?

...And did some ‘quick & dirty’ sketching to think of possible frameworks and patterns to help a user approach the problem.

Persona

Thinking again of the user, I leveraged my research into social media manager roles and common threads from my interviews, and created a user persona:

Using Callie, the part-time social marketing associate, as my conceptual audience for this product, I distilled the most important features into a task flow and low-fidelity prototype - here Callie is adding content for her Seattle tutoring company using the “Target audience” feature that incorporates - you guessed it! - user personas to help this user target her audience with empathy and precision.

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Style

With some of the features solidified, I turned to branding and style.

This company is starting out from a blank slate, so I chose to match the competition in color scheme but differentiate this product in typography. I explored clean lines and geometric shapes, energetic colors along an orange-yellow/blue-green axis, and a black & white framing structure reminiscent of Penguin classics covers that highlight the cover art of each book. I also considered some friendly, playful anthropomorphic “sidekicks” to help the interface feel approachable.

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I chose the name “Voxi” based on the Latin word vox for “voice” - Voxi should help the brand find their voice through AI by offering insights through an approachable interface. I created a logo based on quotation marks in the Piazzolla typeface, a bold font with geometric serifs and lightly rounded angles.

I naturally rhymed “foxy” and came up with a critter pal to help the user through each process.

Presentation

Pulling together the style guide and low-fi screens, I built out a mid-fidelity prototype for my final presentation.

This presentation explained my process from brief to prototype, for a potential stakeholder audience. I presented my deliverables 3 weeks after receiving the brief.

Below is a selection of key screens and microinteractions.

Next steps

Having only designed to a mid-fidelity prototype, I would love to perform user testing to validate the features and user flow. After this I would continue to iterate to a minimum viable product with all essential screens, and develop speculative fiction scenarios based on user testing and interviews.