AI Will Be a Thing in Design and Research, but There Are Some Issues to Resolve First

To what extent do digital designers and user researchers in industry make use of AI-powered systems to support their work? The answer seems to be “not much,” as we found in a survey with 34 practitioners. In general, there seems to be little awareness of the specific advantages AI can bring to a design process and which tools are already out there, despite significant issues with existing processes that could be well mitigated with the help of AI. However, designers and researchers are very open to the topic and would appreciate AI-powered systems to support them in both ideation and evaluation. Providing practitioners with such systems that are easily accessible and demonstrate added value holds great opportunities.