U:idea
Analytic design
MA strategic design
Section
analytic design, strategic design,
interface design, user experience design,
artificial intelligence
Team
Lucia Hering, Sebastian von Westernhagen,
Kim Erhardt
Tools
Figma, After Effects, Blender
Topic
The future of creative AI
The Figma plugin "U:idea" automates the creation of user flows in designed screens to bring your ideas to life faster. This allows you to concentrate on the creative aspects of the project.
Our AI-based screen design plugin saves you time and effort by automatically generating a user flow and designed screens for your project based on your specific requirements and goals. With our tool, you can quickly and easily prototype and iterate your screens without the need for manual layout and design work. This allows you to focus on the creative aspects of your project and bring your ideas to life faster. Try our plugin and see how it revolutionises your interface design process.
Through the U:idea project, we also had the chance to exchange ideas with Figma and present our project to them. We were able to get Figma's opinion directly and had an exchange about artificial intelligence.
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Relevance
In recent months, more and more creative AI tools have been brought to market where users have little or no control over the output. A popular opinion on the topic is the widespread fear of designers to be replaced by an AI in their profession. But we at U:idea believe that creative AIs will complement our creative work in the future. That is why U:idea is addressing the aforementioned problems of today and tomorrow, such as not having control over AI-generated output. This problem and others are relevant because they have a great impact on the efficiency and creativity of the interface design process for creatives.
Pain Points
The process of interface design is very time-consuming and requires many iteration loops that often reveal errors. The "pixel pushing" is perceived as tedious by many designers and artificial intelligences are already being used to speed up the design process, but these do not yet offer enough control over the result. Another problem is the many disordered parameters in previous interface design tools, but these must be mastered to achieve user-centred and aesthetic des
User Testings
In the beginning of our project, we dealt intensively with the topic of "parametric design" and carried out user testing. The aim was to find out which parts of the interface process could be supported by artificial intelligence to make the work of interface designers easier. To do this, we had our testers put various analogue parameters into a circuit and asked them where they would see the greatest added value through AI and what the perfect interface process would look like for them. Through this testing, we gained valuable insights into which parameters we should focus on and how artificial intelligence could support us in the project.
Creative dialogue
The designer can communicate with the Uidea AI in a creative dialogue. This fits into the familiar Figma design, so that the designer does not have to learn any new functions. On request, for example, a designed screen flow for a food sharing app can be created for the customer. The special thing about this is that the wireframing step is completely skipped. The designer can therefore jump immediately and in a matter of seconds into the first iteration process.
Input
The designer also has the option of making parametric changes to the output already generated by the AI. All parameters can be adjusted. Here, too, we are creating a novelty, because U:idea offers a multitude of parameters such as readability, user guidance or consistency.
There is constant iteration between input and output at all times. This enables an efficient, fast and creative process.
Inspiration input
U:idea also offers the possibility to insert the researched inspirations from favourite websites in the form of screenshots or links via drag and drop. This gives the designer the option to direct the output more in the direction of his/her inspiration input. He/she has maximum control, as here again the parameters can be used to control where the focus of the inspiration lies.
Feedback Loop
The feedback loop function allows you to jump back to any step in the history at any time, creating the ultimate loop to give the designer maximum control over their design process.
Strategy
The Figma plugin U:idea replaces an entire step in the interface design process. Instead of designing a user flow in wireframes and then transferring it to fleshed-out screens, U:idea automates the generation of user flows in fleshed-out screens. This saves an enormous amount of time in visualising an idea and making it quickly testable in a prototype. This means that iteration loops after user testing are no problem with minimal effort.
Smoketest
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