AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series

Learn how and when to use AI during the design thinking process

Join us for our live 3-part AI workshop series and learn how to harness the power of generative AI to enhance your idea generation, research synthesis, and prototyping skills. This practical workshop will help you understand how AI tools work and how to get the most out of them. It’s a safe space for hands-on practice with different tools, techniques, and mindsets for using AI in your design thinking process. With a focus on how to get started using AI to strengthen your design thinking toolkit, you'll learn how to collaborate with AI to enhance your problem-solving skills and creative thinking. 

This beginner-friendly workshop series will help you better understand how to leverage AI in your design thinking process and walk away with techniques and mindsets you can apply to your work immediately. 

If you cannot attend the live workshop, all sessions will be recorded and accessible to enrolled students. We will provide a resource guide that we recommend you download and preview before the workshops. Reach out to hello@ideou.com with any questions.

Skills You’ll Gain
Inspiration x AI Brainstorming x AI Synthesis x AI Prototyping x AI
Format Online Workshop
Start Date
Quantity
Duration 3 Sessions
Time 60 Mins each Session
Price
Regular price
$299
Sale price
$250
Unit price
per 
Download Syllabus

What You'll Learn

Live Moments: 3 AI x Design Thinking Demo Sessions

Learn the basics of using AI tools and how AI can help you brainstorm ideas, synthesize research, and create simple prototypes.

    All demo sessions are recorded and available until March 9, 11:59 pm Pacific Time (UTC -7).

  • January 29 at 7 am or 4 pm Pacific Time (UTC -8)
  • February 5 at 7 am or 4 pm Pacific Time (UTC -8)
  • February 12 at 7 am or 4 pm Pacific Time (UTC -8)
  • Introduction: Overview of Design Thinking with AI

    Leverage Generative AI to enhance your creative capabilities and transform your approach to design thinking.
    2 Video Lessons
    • Augmenting Human Creativity — Learn about how you can take advantage of AI's unique strengths to accelerate your workflows and amplify your impact in creative problem-solving.

    • Making Sense of AI — IDEO designers share their unique perspectives on AI, revealing the diverse ways we can understand this emerging technology.

    3 Articles
    • What is Design Thinking? Get an overview of the key phases and learn where Generative AI can be embedded in this process.

    • What is Generative AI? Get a breakdown of how large language models work, what they can and can't do, and explore real-world applications across different fields and industries.

    • Working With and Alongside AI — Compare the unique capabilities of humans and AI systems and understand how they can work together and complement each other.

    1 Activity
    • Explore Your Relationship with AI — Surface your current mental model of AI and define its role in your work, and frame your ideal relationship with AI.

    Lesson 1: Using AI Responsibly

    Learn to use AI tools thoughtfully and responsibly by understanding how they work, evaluating their risks, and checking for potential harms and bias.
    1 Video Lesson
    • A Mentor Moment with Jenna Fizel — As IDEO’s Managing Director of Emerging Technology, Jenna Fizel explains why having a basic technical understanding of how AI models work helps you have more meaningful and responsible interactions with AI systems.

    2 Resources
    • The Landscape of AI Tools — Learn about the growing landscape of AI tools, which ones we chose for this course, and why. Get a handy framework to help you evaluate and experiment with AI tools in your own practice.

    • Responsible AI Guide — Generative AI can cause widespread harm when used in the wrong ways. Consider the ethical implications and understand the potential impacts and risks of using AI in your work. Learn critical questions to ask and best practices to follow for responsible and ethical use of AI.

    1 Activity
    • Checking for AI Harms and Bias — Practice ways to uncover and address possible harms of using AI tools, including biases in their inputs and outputs, and consider the ethical implications and unintended consequences of designing with AI.

    Lesson 2: Gathering Inspiration with AI

    Use AI to expand your sources of creative inspiration while complementing traditional design research methods.
    3 Video Lessons
    • A Mentor Moment with Zach Hobbs — How do you get inspired when you're stuck in a creative rut? Meet IDEO Design Director Zach Hobbs and see how he takes an experimental approach to incorporating GenAI into his hands-on practice—and why we need to maintain a healthy skepticism about these tools.

    • A Mentor Moment with Amina Jambo — IDEO Design Researcher Amina Jambo and her team experimented with AI-based user personas on a healthcare project. Here’s what they learned about using AI to understand the healthcare experiences of rural communities, and why real human stories remain essential for rich and nuanced insights.

    • AI in Practice: Gathering Inspiration — Follow along as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools as starting points for finding inspiration and understanding context, and learn how to start applying them in your own practice.

    2 Resources
    • Gallery of AI Experiments — Step into IDEO's playground of AI experiments and see how designers use these tools to feed their curiosity and find new perspectives. Explore real examples that showcase the intersection of human creativity and AI, revealing new possibilities and provocative questions about this emerging technology.

    • AI in Design Research — AI is not a replacement for talking to real people. Explore the promises and perils of using AI in user-inspired research. Learn to thoughtfully blend GenAI tools with traditional human-centered methods.

    1 Activity
    • Get Inspired for Research with AI — Work alongside AI to jump-start your design research and enhance your process while keeping people at the center. Practice using these tools to explore topics, plan interviews, and draft discussion guides that lead to rich, insightful conversations.

    Lesson 3: Synthesizing with AI

    Use AI to speed up research and synthesis and get to insights faster while making sure to evaluate and validate AI outputs throughout your process.
    3 Video Lessons
    • Synthesizing with AI — Save time in your synthesis process by using AI for basic data analysis tasks, freeing you to focus on deeper sense-making and insights-building. Discover ways to leverage GenAI's strengths in processing, transforming, and summarizing data.

    • Thinking Critically with AI — AI is a powerful but imperfect and unpredictable tool. Learn why critical evaluation and validation of AI outputs is essential.

    • AI in Practice: Synthesizing — Follow along as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools to perform basic analytical tasks with both quantitative and qualitative datasets, and learn how to start applying them in your practice.

    1 Resource
    • A Deep Dive into LLM’s — Dive deeper into the capabilities of large language models, along with their limitations, and learn best practices for working with your data.

    1 Activity
    • AI-Assisted Synthesis in 4 Steps — Practice a four-step process for synthesizing your research with AI. Learn to leverage AI’s data processing capabilities and use these tools to help you capture learnings, identify themes, craft insights, and define opportunities for design from your data.

    Lesson 4: Brainstorming with AI

    Use AI to develop ideas faster and explore many options, learning to prompt and guide these tools toward more innovative solutions.
    4 Video Lessons
    • Brainstorming with AI — Understand where AI shines and falls short in ideation. While it's great at generating lots of ideas, it tends toward generic outputs. Learn why we need to guide and push these tools beyond their default behaviors to get to more novel and surprising ideas.

    • A Mentor Moment with Jenna Fizel — IDEO’s Managing Director of Emerging Technology, Jenna Fizel, shares strategies for moving beyond basic prompts to get more creative ideas from AI tools and align your interactions more closely with your intentions and goals.

    • A Mentor Moment with Zoey Zhu — AI is good at combining knowledge from different domains to help you find creative solutions to complex problems. IDEO Designer & Creative Technologist Zoey Zhu shares how this capability is opening up new and exciting possibilities for collaboration across research fields and industries.

    • AI in Practice: Brainstorming — Follow along as we demonstrate step-by-step how to use popular GenAI tools for brainstorming with specific prompting techniques, and learn how to start applying them in your practice.

    2 Resources
    • Tips for Talking to AI — How we engage with AI can influence the quality of its responses. Learn simple tips and techniques to improve your interactions and get better outcomes from GenAI models.

    • Strategies for Crafting AI Prompts — Explore different approaches for building prompts to brainstorm with AI. Learn strategies for structuring your prompts and providing context to help you produce more interesting and compelling ideas.

    1 Activity
    • Spark Unexpected Ideas with AI Mash-Up — Spark fresh ideas from unexpected pairings by leveraging GenAI's ability to combine unrelated concepts in realistic ways in this AI mash-up activity.

    Lesson 5: Prototyping with AI

    Use AI to augment your prototyping abilities and bring concepts to life quickly while staying intentional about the design choices behind your prototypes.
    3 Video Lessons
    • Prototyping with AI — AI gives us a powerful new way to make ideas tangible. Learn how these tools can help you express concepts visually, iterate quickly, and accelerate your prototyping process.

    • A Mentor Moment with Takashi Wickes — A common critique of AI imagery is that it lacks human intention, creating visuals that are too polished and high-fidelity to invite meaningful feedback. But IDEO Interaction Designer Takashi Wickes shares tips for using GenAI to create low and medium-fidelity sacrificial concepts that allow you to get great feedback.

    • AI in Practice: Prototyping — Follow as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools to visualize concepts and create low-fidelity prototypes, and learn how to apply them in your practice.

    3 Resources
    • Simple, Consistent Visuals with AI — Getting AI tools to create concept sketches with a simple, consistent style can be tricky—their outputs are often too detailed, varied, and finished-looking. Learn techniques for guiding these tools iteratively toward the right level of fidelity, plus guidelines for using AI-generated images responsibly in your prototypes.

    • Case Study: If These Pants Could Talk — What if you could learn everything about a product just by asking it directly? Follow a case study where AI was used to bring this speculative concept to life. Learn how the team prototyped a chatbot that lets people talk directly with a pair of vintage jeans.

    • Case Study: Designing Materials for Better Storytelling with Generative AI — What if we could design materials before they even existed? Follow a case study exploring how GenAI lets anyone visualize new materials with imagined properties and aesthetics—helping tell more impactful stories while pushing the edges of what's possible in product design.

    1 Activity
    • Make Ideas Tangible with AI — Bring your ideas to life by using AI image generators to build low-fidelity prototypes. Create quick and simple concept sketches and storyboards that you can present to people to spark conversation and invite feedback.

    Conclusion: Looking Ahead to the Future of AI

    Explore diverse perspectives on AI's future and shape your own vision for responsible, human-centered design with AI.
    2 Video Lessons
    • A Mentor Moment with Savannah Kunovsky — We have an opportunity to create a future we want to live in. Rather than react with fear, Savannah Kunovsky, IDEO's Managing Director of Emerging Technology, believes now is the moment to step bravely into the unknown. She shares three key indicators of what’s coming and what to consider as we build emerging tech like GenAI, so we can design a better future together.

    • Perspectives on the Future of AI — What's next for AI? IDEO designers from a range of domains and disciplines share their visions and predictions for how AI might evolve and shape our future.

    1 Resource
    • Case Study: LLM Mediated Manifesto — We can all shape how AI defines our future by participating in how we use and build these tools today. Learn the story of how one IDEO team used an LLM to help 75 people from different backgrounds come together and collaboratively author a manifesto about AI's future.

    1 Activity
    • Create Your Own Mini-Manifesto — Take the first steps toward creating a more responsible, inclusive and human-centered future for AI by writing your own mini-manifesto. Capture your beliefs about the responsible use of AI, where and how you plan to use it in your practice, and collaborate with AI to outline guiding principles and commitments that align with your values.

    Here's What Past Workshop Attendees Have Said

    Senior Director of Strategy
    Chief Executive Officer
    Workplace Insights & Strategy Lead
    Head of Learning Experience & Research
    AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series
    Cohort Course

    “I have already used some of the processes I learned—particularly brainstorming between the written and visual. Very cool”

    Senior Director of Strategy
    AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series
    Cohort Course

    “FANTASTIC facilitator! I loved the applied learning and clear explanations throughout the workshop.”

    Chief Executive Officer
    AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series
    Cohort Course

    “I was surprised to learn about the versatility of ChatGPT. I didn't know it could create charts, data visualizations, tables, and images.”

    Workplace Insights & Strategy Lead
    AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series
    Cohort Course

    “I learned how to leverage these tools to improve my design thinking process.”

    Head of Learning Experience & Research

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