Empowering everyday individuals to creatively express themselves on social media with GenAI.
OVERVIEW
With the rapid development of AI, tech companies are racing to harness and deploy the tool. Our client, a social media company, approached us to help them identify possibilities for integrating generative AI (GenAI) art into social media and craft a design strategy framework for their future product roadmap. I led the research for a project to imagine the potential roles that GenAI could play in social media and identify strategic directions within their product ecosystem.
IMPACT
The research findings identified strategic opportunities and potential concepts for Meta’s creative GenAI tools.
I have omitted or edited confidential client information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of IDEO or the client.
Our client's overarching goal was to foster connections amongst people. With the swift rise of AI, they sought to pinpoint opportunities and create a design strategy framework to guide the development of future GenAI creative tools that can be integrated into their existing product ecosystem.
Our deliverables for this project were research insights and learnings, strategic directions, and a design strategy framework. The final deliverable was a final Strategic Direction Working Session and design strategy framework.
The research insights and strategic directions from the first round of research were shared and iterated upon during the midpoint Strategic Possibilities Workshop. The majority of the project was remote, while the midpoint workshop took place in person at the IDEO office in San Francisco.
My Achievements:
1. Embraced the challenge and ambiguity of "blue sky" generative research. Our client provided us with few guardrails as we explored the possibilities of GenAI art and social media. I devised a research plan that would tackle the open-ended challenge and provide structure for the project.
2. Advocated for ethical AI tools.I advocated for a conversation around transparency in GenAI art products during our midpoint workshop and elevated user concerns around ethical AI practices. This became one of the umbrella themes throughout the project. 3.Designed three focus group workshops. Along with our 1-on-1 interview research activities, I designed three co-creative workshops tailored for our focus group participants. These sessions proved instrumental in generating valuable insights and eliciting feedback that guided our strategic directions. 4. Crafted the midpoint storytelling framework. Our client was well-versed in quantitative research and sought IDEO's unique focus on people and their narratives. I played a pivotal role in constructing the storytelling framework for the midpoint presentation, crafting and highlight the stories that we heard from our research participants.
Challenge
How might we empower everyday individuals to creatively express themselves on social media using generative AI (Gen AI) tools?
Framing the Research Approach
I wanted to better understand everyday individuals' needs, hopes, and desires for the future they want to thrive in. What are everyday individuals' contradictions, beliefs, and unmet needs when it comes to creative expression and social connection?
1. What are everyday individuals' relationships to social media? How do they stay connected? 2. In what ways doescreative expression manifest? What are the motivations behind these manifestations? 3. What are everyday creatives' perceptions of Gen AI art? 4. What encourages play for everyday individuals? In what ways can they feel safe enough to play? 5. What parts of the client's product ecosystem are most conducive to new AI social media products and tools?
Research Approach
I devised a research plan to guide the process through two rounds of concept generation and research (each indicated by a star in the image below).
Research Goals
Research Phase 1 (Generate): 1. Explore opportunities for Gen AI art to enrich the social media experience. 2. Understand attitudes, behaviors, and unmet needs in creative expression and social connection.
Research Phase 2 (Evaluate): 1. Assess the tensions, value propositions, and use cases of each strategic possibility shared during the midpoint. 2. Evaluate why certain strategic dimensions and value propositions resonate.
Key Methods (and why!)
Desk research:I conducted social listening across a variety of popular social media platforms to learn about trending topics and competitive analysis.
1-on-1 Stakeholder conversations: We engaged in discussions with 7 key client stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of the company's product development landscape, decision-making processes, and individual hypotheses for this project. These learnings provided context as we ideated our early themes and sacrificial concepts.
Expert interviews: I recruited and led conversations with 7 experts in digital connection, creative expression, behavioral science, art therapy, art gallery curation, flow states, and game design. Expert interviews also inspired the team in early theme ideation as we explore fields that are either directly related or analogous to our challenge.
In-depth user interviews: I recruited and 8 in-depth virtual interviews with everyday individuals (ages 13-71) across the U.S.
Focus groups: I designed 3 focus group workshops focused on edge use cases. Focus groups included: a multi-generational familyof Gen Alpha to Boomers, second-generation immigrants who overcame language barriers to communicate with family, and a group of friends who relied on the digital space to stay connected.
Quantitative survey: I worked with our data scientist to deploy a survey to 300 everyday social media users to assess the tensions and value propositions of the prioritized strategic directions.
Analogous experiences: A crucial aspect of the user journey with AI involves onboarding and learning a new tool. To immerse ourselves, we downloaded Can of Soup.
Over a weekend, I attended a ceramic-painting class with a non-artist friend. After a brief tour around the studio, we were left to our own devices. This encounter emphasized the significance of onboarding experiences, peer support, and clear guidance in user interactions.
Later on, this insight, backed by additional research findings, evolved into one of our four main strategic directions.
Timeline
After crafting the research plan, I worked with my team to finalize the project plan. The Strategic Direction Working Session was pushed to Week 9 for non-project related reasons outside of the team's control.
Week 1: Problem Definition and Research Recruitment
Weeks 2-4: Design Research
Weeks 7-8: Testing and Evaluation (post-midpoint workshop)
Sensitive details and information around research insights and strategic recommendations have been edited or omitted.
Following Phase 1 of research, I distilled 6 key research insights and collaborated with the team to translate them into 4 strategic directions. Each strategic direction contained actionable insights backed by user stories and quotes, along with explorations into how this might show up in our client's ecosystem and analogous products on the market.
I crafted the overarching narrative structure for the midpoint presentation. In addition, I created the storytelling segment for our multi-generational family focus group to show how exploring new tools and making mistakes can be fun (as opposed to daunting) when it happens with peers.
Product Impact
Ahead of the strategy workshop, I distilled key learnings for each product concept tested in the Testing and Evaluation phase of research. These learnings, along with our earlier insights, laid the foundation for the final Strategic Direction Working Session that shared each concept's core offering, key users, potential barriers, and competitive advantage.
Learnings & Reflections
Limitation: Time. With more time, I would have broadened the scope of our research by including additional edge profiles for a more comprehensive approach. Additionally, I would have initiated a diary study in Phase 1 to glean insights into how people interact with social media and express themselves in their daily lives. An AI ethics expert would help us identify unseen gaps in our concepts.
Converging and diverging on work streams as a team. One of my favorite things about IDEO is our collaborative nature. Everyone is in this together. The immersive experience enables us to deeply understand how each craft contributes to another. I believe this is invaluable in research to build empathy for our end users. However, the time constraints on this project also stressed the importance of knowing when to diverge to apply our individual strengths to our craft so that we could utilize everyone's diverse skillset.
Intentional guidance makes for safe spaces (and returning customers!). With each research project, I continue to learn about providing structure as an act of kindness for participants. I've learned that this extends to onboarding experiences. The participants who experienced more joy and agency during their AI onboarding experiences with us expressed more willingness to adopt the tool than if they had to figure it out on their own.
Ethics are a difficult, but necessary conversation. Most of our participants were hesitant about AI art tools. The novelty of AI sparked a need for transparency (where did this come from?) and ethical practices (will my likeness be stolen?). These dialogues are essential to keeping ethical considerations at the forefront of AI tool development.
