Enhancing UX with AI - Balancing Efficiency and Human Insight

Overview

  • Goal

    Demonstrate how AI can accelerate and improve the UX design process while maintaining user-centric and inclusive outcomes.

  • Role

    Product Designer

  • Tools

    AI tools - Figmamake, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Stitch, Deepseek, Uizard

  • Skills Used

    Creating inclusive persona creation, enhancing user testing, design iteration, quick prototyping, generating layouts, creating visual concepts, human-in-the-loop decision-making

  • Timeline

    4 weeks

Context & Challenge

The project involved designing an AI-powered fitness app (hypothetical concept) that seamlessly integrates personalized workout planning, nutrition tracking, and community engagement focused on revolutionizing personalized health and fitness with AI-assisted workflows to accelerate research, ideation, prototyping, and workflow design while demonstrating measurable efficiency gains, improve speed, inclusivity, and usability. The challenge was to leverage AI for ideation and efficiency without losing the nuance of human judgment in design decisions.

Process

AI- assisted Brand Research & Persona Development

Tools:- OpenAI, ChatGPT

  • Created brand’s logos and mood board from OpenAI.

  • Used ChatGPT to analyze survey data and generate initial persona drafts.

  • Incorporated inclusive persona guidelines by:

    • Ensuring diversity in demographics, abilities, and backgrounds.

    • Verifying against real user data to remove AI bias.

  • Example Output:

    • AI-generated draft persona → Human refinement → Final validated persona set.

Prompts used:-

  1. Make logo for fitness app "fitfuel" using yellow, black and white shades with showing energetic and healthy women.

  2. Create a mood board for fitness app "fitfuel". Tone of brand- energetic, healthy life. Use yellow, white and black.

  3. Initial prompt- Create 2 different user personas for a fitness app called "Fitfuel" for age group of 20-50 years, for busy professionals and people who want to improve their physical and mental wellbeing not just weight loss. Include a picture of that person too.

Updated Prompts:-

a) Now create user personas for someone non-western background and who wants to focus on getting fit with similar group of people, who likes to try new exercise. Include accessibility friendly example, working moms who wants to stay fit include realistic example like managing stress.

b) Generate a detailed user persona for someone who would face unique challenges using FitFuel fitness app. Consider factors like age, physical limitations, technology comfort level, or economic constraints. Include their goals, frustrations, and specific needs." example - Parent with limited time and unpredictable schedule.

4. Generate onboarding microscopy, avoid stereotypical fitness lingo. Voice tone of the brand is energetic and healthy lifestyle.

Competitor and User Research

Tools:- ChatGPT

Goals - Leverage AI tools to conduct competitive analysis, market sizing and inclusive user research to identify actionalble product opportunities. Ensuring diversity in demographics, abilities, and backgrounds.

Prompts used:-

  1. Conduct a competitive analyses for a fitness app called "Fitfuel"for busy professionals who want to focus on their physical and mental wellbeing. Give me their core offerings, their strengths & weaknesses and fitfuel's differentiation opportunities.

  2. Generate 2 early product concepts that challenge current norms Remember to make them specific and actionable and focus on how they address the underserved audience's needs.

  3. Research question - "How do busy proffesionals currently manage their fitness routines?" create a 5-question survey (mix of open and closed questions), audience should be between 29 years to 40 years old. Avoid any assumptions that users have for any fitness routine.

  4. Analyze the simulation above. List the main usability, accessibility, and personalization issues encountered. Rank them from most to least severe, considering impact on user success.

  5. For the most severe issue identified, provide 3 specific design solutions that would make FitFuel more accessible. Include UI changes, content adjustments, or feature modifications.

Design Opportunity

Based on competitor Analysis and user research findings I was able to identity areas which I included while designing wireframes for fitfuel such as:-

  1. Create routines that evolve based on energy and mood; use check-ins instead of streaks to build habit.

  2. Position Fitfuel as the most inclusive wellness app for real professionals, not influencers.

  3. Enable opt-in support groups or anonymous communities e.g. “Working Moms Recharge Circle”.

Generate Wireframes and Prototype

Tool:- Stitch, Figma

Prompts used:-

  1. Generate an onboarding screen for a fitness app called ‘FitFuel’. The screen should introduce the user to the app’s features, with clear CTAs to ‘Sign Up’ and ‘Skip’. The design should follow a clean, modern aesthetic with a mobile-first approach. Use a mix of black, white and yellow colors and high-quality images of healthy and balanced lifestyle. Include a welcome message at the top and brief descriptions of features beneath the CTAs.”.

  2. Now make dashboard screen for meal planner showing the “Simple Start” mode Add a “Quick Add from Recent Meals” and “Save as Favorite Combo” option. Consider voice input or photo-to-text recognition for faster entry.

  3. Create a community hub screen showcasing subgroups or themed spaces (e.g., “Stretch & Breathe,” “Busy Moms Club,” “First 5 Minutes”).Auto-suggest beginner communities during onboarding Use welcoming copy (“Every small step counts”) and inclusive imagery, create themed safe spaces & starter groups, Add filters, interest tags, & summaries.

  4. Create a workflow for AI-powered feature personalized workout plans based on user goals and time restrictions. Document the input → processing → output flow with a diagram or step-by-step explanation- Include examples of how this would appear in the app interface. use logic, design principles. Illustrate how data is collected and interpreted and delivered as workout suggestions. Include decision points such as fitness goals, time constraints and health issues etc.

    Updated Prompts:-

    a.) Create a community hub screen showcasing subgroups or themed spaces (e.g., “Stretch & Breathe,” “Busy Moms Club,” “First 5 Minutes”).Auto-suggest beginner communities during onboarding Use welcoming copy (“Every small step counts”) and inclusive imagery, create themed safe spaces & starter groups, Add filters, interest tags, & summaries, Introduce “Daily Sparks” & coach nudges, Localize language, avoid gym clichés. show all these in 2 different screens

    b.) In the personalized screen designed above now add a contextual banner: “Built for your goal: Reduce Stress in 10 min/day” and add onboarding recap button on plan screen: “Update My Goals” — reinforces link between input and plan output

Initial Versions

Once I developed the wireframes in stitch I imported them to figma to make prototype and made necessary changes to match brand’s look and follow consistent pattern.

Updated Versions

Usability Testing

Prompt: Develop a usability testing plan for the attached UI screens of fitfuel app. Focus on the following flows:- onboarding screen, meal planner, fitness tracking, community hub and personalized plan. Define success metric, realistic task scenarios and behavioral observation. Approach this as a UX researcher on platforms like userzoom with the goal of covering usability gaps, engagement issues and possible design opportunities.

Tool used: ChatGPT

Test Objective: To evaluate ease of use, clarity, and engagement across core flows in

FitFuel’s mobile app, with a focus on:

  • Accessibility for diverse users (busy parents, non-Western users, beginners)

  • Motivation and feedback cues

  • Personalization effectiveness

  • Navigation efficiency and task completion

Go-To-Market Strategy

Prompt: Generate a go-to-market strategy for fitfuel, the value proposition focuses on AI powered personalized workouts, time saving features, meal prep and community support. Identify three target audience and 3 market channels briefly explaining why each channel aligns with that target audience.

Tool used: ChatGPT

Test Objective: Value Proposition of FitFuel empowers busy individuals to reach their health goals through AI-personalized workouts, meal planning tools, and a supportive community saving them time while improving results.

Success KPI

Prompt: Identify 5-8 key performance indicators (KPIs) that will measure FitFuel's success For each KPI, specify target values, measurement frequency, and tools for tracking Create a dashboard mockup showing how these metrics would be visualized. Suggest 8 key performance indicators for measuring success of a fitness app with Al-powered personalization features. Include target values and appropriate measurement intervals.

Tool used: ChatGPT

Test Objective: To drive sustained growth and optimize user experience post-launch, FitFuel willrigorously monitor AI-identified KPIs, each with defined targets, measurement intervals, and recommended tracking tools. Results will be visualized in a modern, investor-ready dashboard for real-time insights and rapid response to user feedback.

AI Efficiency Report

Efficiency Metrics (Before vs After AI Integration)

Task Before AI (Time/Output) After AI (Time/Output) % Improvement

Persona Creation 4 hours per persona 1.5 hours 62.5% faster

Low-Fidelity Prototyping 6 hours per screen 2.5 hours 58% faster

Usability Test Synthesis 8 hours per session 3 hours 62.5% faster

Microcopy Generation 3 hours per flow 30 minutes 83% faster

Pitch Deck Development 10 hours 3 hours 70% faster

Business Outcome Metrics

  • Time-to-Prototype: Reduced from 2 weeks to 5 days.

  • Design-to-Development Handoff Time: Reduced by 40%.

  • Stakeholder Approval Cycle: Reduced from 3 rounds to 1-2 rounds due to clearer mockups and AI-generated rationale.

  • Content Turnaround Time: Reduced by 70% for marketing and onboarding screens.

AI Tools Used

  • ChatGPT – for UX writing, content generation, user personas, and brainstorming.

  • DALL·E / Midjourney – for visual ideation and AI-generated asset drafts.

  • Uizard / Galileo / Framer AI – for low-fidelity and high-fidelity screen generation.

  • Useberry + Maze AI – for usability test planning and analysis.

Lessons Learned

What Worked Well:

  • Speed & Consistency: Faster iterations without sacrificing quality.

  • Inspiration Starter: AI helped overcome creative blocks, especially in early concept stages.

  • Persona Realism: AI-generated personas mirrored realistic user needs based on industry data.

  • Auto-Summarization: Greatly helped in analyzing usability transcripts.

Challenges Faced:

  • Context Misinterpretation: AI occasionally misunderstood prompts; needed clear inputs.

  • Visual Diversity Gaps: AI-generated images initially lacked body/age diversity and required manual curation.

  • Quality Check Still Needed: AI outputs improved speed but still required design critique and refinement.