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R1 · Use-case field guide

Practical AI use cases for design thinking

Each case starts from a professional workflow, produces a concrete artefact, and makes the human–AI division of responsibility explicit.

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Design-thinking phase
Guidance

Showing 12 of 30 use cases

Ideate Use with care

Adapt cross-industry analogies to a local challenge

Compare sourced cases from other contexts, extract transferable mechanisms, and turn only verified analogies into locally testable adaptation hypotheses.

★★★★☆Open →
Prototype Use with care

Build a disposable clickable interface from a verified flow

Turn a verified task flow into a stable, disposable clickable prototype that can be tested without being mistaken for production software.

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Define Use with care

Build evidence-backed behavioural personas

Create constrained behavioural persona drafts from coded evidence, then audit every attribute before using them to inform design decisions.

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Ideate Use with care

Co-ideate through a fixed question protocol

Use a question-led AI exchange to develop a designer-authored concept from an evidence-backed How-Might-We question.

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Define Use with care

Code and affinity-map research evidence

Use AI for a traceable first pass across an approved qualitative corpus, then have researchers verify, reorganise, and name the themes.

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Ideate Use with care

Converge on concepts with a desirability-feasibility-responsibility review

Turn an AI-expanded concept pool into a human decision by independently assessing desirability, feasibility, viability, and responsibility.

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Empathize Useful pattern

Design a contextual observation protocol

Prepare a neutral field-observation sheet that captures behaviour, environment, workarounds, and service context consistently.

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Ideate Use with care

Generate concepts from verified opportunity signals

Use AI to recombine a curated signal pack into traceable concepts, then have humans assess the concepts against real-world criteria.

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Ideate Use with care

Grow the idea pool after a human-only round

Generate ideas independently first, then use AI to search for genuinely different mechanisms before the team curates one combined portfolio.

★★☆☆☆Open →
Prototype Use with care

Maintain a what-we-heard / what-we-changed prototype log

Pair AI-assisted prototype drafts with an auditable record of de-identified input, participant feedback, changes, rejections, and accountable ownership.

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Define Use with care

Map the current-state user journey

Assemble fragmented research into a current-state journey map while labelling evidence, operational context, and assumptions separately.

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Empathize Use with care

Moderate structured feedback at scale

Use AI moderation only for a fixed, low-risk feedback guide when consistent administration matters more than exploratory discovery.

★★★★☆Open →
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Responsible use of AI in design thinking practice and teaching. Human judgment in the lead — always.

Erasmus+ KA220-SCH Cooperation Partnership · 2025–2027

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Erasmus+ Programme. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

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