Eli Woolery and Aaron Walter at Design Better run a wonderfully inspiring podcast focused on creativity and development for designers. So when we approached them with the idea of running workshops, we were excited that they were game to collaborate.

And what better topic to explore together than the intersection of generative AI and design. Aardvark has been focused on human-centered design (design thinking) since we started in 2013…helping companies find product-market fit, conducting research to identify promising design opportunities, and helping teams expand their thinking to generate ideas and develop new concepts that people love.

And more recently, we have been leaning hard into learning and development for teams… building immersive learning experiences and leveraging the tools, methods, and mindsets of design to help teams of all types learn and grow and work better together.

Combine all of that with the boom of generative AI in the last few years. Ever since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, generative AI has been top of mind for many as they think about the future of work. Nearly every person in every job may be directly affected by this new technology.

Few people have had the opportunity to play around with generative AI and even fewer have made the direct connections between its possibilities and the mechanics of every day design work. So we decided to dive into this headfirst.

We too were curious about where generative AI makes sense when it comes to daily design work. In what ways might this move from being just a toy to a valuable tool for doing great design work? Given the required energy to run generative AI queries, how might we be more strategic in our use of this amazing technology?

So, in an effort to keep our focus on the future of work, we kicked off our first AI x Design Thinking workshop in May of this year (2024). Attendance filled to maximum capacity within an hour.

We have now run 4 cohorts through this workshop with more to come. We are learning more and more each time and the participants are loving the chance to make new connections with other designers and explore this topic together.

We’re excited by the positive feedback from these public sessions and are starting to see more companies asking for us to run this workshop for their teams internally.

We’re also thrilled to announce that we have decided to run an in-person version of this workshop in San Francisco on August 6th.

We hope you can join us.

‍