The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Design Profession

In February 2023, UX Budapest hosted a meetup where three professionals with different backgrounds discussed the growing influence of artificial intelligence in their field. The DONE. design team also attended. Here is a report from our UX expert, Tímea Gőcze.

A Fairytale Book in One Day

The first speaker was Nóra Bereczki, a marketing expert, who used Midjourney and ChatGPT to create a fairytale book with 12 stories in just 8 hours. Last fall, her husband introduced her to Midjourney and its potential, which prompted her to start experimenting with and learning how to use the tool.

Illustration: https://starryai.com/

During her presentation, she demonstrated the different phases of creation, explaining how she learned to use the appropriate prompts in Midjourney. Her example was illustrative: by fine-tuning the instructions given to the algorithm, she initially generated a rough pizza tower. By refining the prompts to specify the types of pizzas, their arrangement, and the camera angle, she achieved an almost perfect image.

The platform has significantly improved over the past few months: issues like distorted eye depictions that previously exposed the algorithm’s errors have been addressed by Midjourney’s developers. The problem of generating more than five fingers per limb will also soon be fixed—a particular concern for creating images like those of the six-fingered poet Ady Endre.

Image Source: UX Budapest Group

Another known limitation of the software is that it can currently only generate one image per story, meaning it can’t yet create multiple images in the same style or use previously created characters. However, a good graphic designer can build on existing materials to create a strong foundation.

Nóra also discussed ChatGPT, which she used to write the text for the fairytale book. The book was created in English because the tool’s Hungarian language capabilities are still developing, and it proved true that a skilled creative professional can produce very good stories with the help of this tool.

UX and Artificial Intelligence

The next speaker was Ádám Almási, a product strategist, who demonstrated how ChatGPT can be used within the UX field. He illustrated how the tool can generate different personas, user interview questions, and even assist in brainstorming with the right prompts.

Of course, the tool still has limitations—since it works with pre-provided information, it may make mistakes and provide incorrect answers. Therefore, it is important not to rely entirely on ChatGPT-generated information but to consider it as a tool that can aid our work.

ChatGPT

The final speaker was ChatGPT itself, prompted by Ákos Csertán. Ákos shared the process of assembling the presentation: he first asked ChatGPT to create a list of topics for a UX design presentation and then requested a detailed text for each topic. Subsequently, he used another AI tool to create a video version of the completed presentation text.

Since separate texts were generated for each topic by ChatGPT, the final presentation was entertaining but somewhat repetitive and filled with general information, despite being presented by robotic-like presenters.

UI Perspective on the Presentation

Senior graphic designer Barna Ferenczi and junior graphic designer Eszter Nágel attended the presentation and viewed the AI’s influence on UX from a UI perspective.

Barna:“It’s hard to estimate when the law will catch up with the technology, but as long as the usage rights of generated images are so unclear, intellectual property infringement will continue to be a concern. However, the presentation placed the algorithm-created images in a different light. For example, if I needed to generate a completely unique illustration for a specific topic, which I would almost certainly not find as a ready-made material or would have to spend hours searching for, I can accomplish it in 10-15 minutes with the desired effect.

Illustration: https://starryai.com/

While this type of AI represents a significant technological leap, it is still far from creating satisfactory works without human creativity and vision. Moreover, until it can produce consistent visual systems and designs, it doesn’t pose a serious threat to designers.

In a few months, it will likely become a valuable addition to our toolkit, so it will be worth learning the ‘art’ of prompt creation as soon as possible.

What was a bit unsettling during the presentation was how the ChatGPT-generated content was read by a Colossyan (character-generating AI) with slightly robotic muscle twitches, yet still quite lifelike. For a moment, I had a Skynet feeling.

Eszter:The lesson for me was that AI should not be viewed as an enemy but as a tool that can simplify and speed up a designer’s work. Self-development and adapting new techniques and technologies are crucial. Human imagination and creativity will likely remain for many years to come, making it hard to imagine an AI that could replace these qualities.

How Can We Use Artificial Intelligence at DONE.?

Internally, we have only experimented with ChatGPT for UX research so far, such as finding competitors in the market or other similar sites.

According to ChatGPT: