Interactive Prototyping and Creative Artificial Intelligence

This is a practical design course on perspectives, tools, and methods for going from an idea for a product or service to an interactive design prototype ready for handoff to a development team, with artificial intelligence (AI) as a native part of the design process throughout. We start with brainstorming and iteratively refining the core concept for your product or service, using AI tools to accelerate ideation, stress-test assumptions, and articulate a clear value proposition. From there, we build a brand identity along with detailed personas and stories that capture why and for whom your product or service is developed, exploring how AI can both inform and challenge our assumptions about users and their needs. We translate those personas and stories into storyboards that illustrate the application's experiential flow in real-world contexts, including interaction patterns specific to AI-powered features such as conversational interfaces, generative outputs, and context-aware responses. A central focus of the course is the design and development of a component-based pattern library for creating interactive prototypes with live data, including components that represent and communicate AI behaviors to users in transparent and trustworthy ways. We introduce a varied, growing collection of third-party component libraries to give your prototypes a professional and polished quality. Prototypes are built in a visual design tool that supports creating and enhancing components with code, enabling richer interactions and experience flows, including live integrations with AI application programming interfaces (APIs). Throughout, we treat AI tools not just as subjects of design but as active collaborators in the design process itself. The work in this course draws on a mix of the following tools and technologies: Framer and Notion, along with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and AI APIs and tooling.