The method: AI & the Basic User Journey
Evaluate requirements, validate wants and needs, and define design opportunities in one workflow. The cyclic BUJ framework guides design thinking for how people engage with online products. By instructing a Google Gem to analyze enterprise-consumer relationships using the BUJ framework, Pat's transformed a proven aid into an active, critical UX partner.
Wants
Needs
Tasks
Input
Output
Review & Recycle
Experiment 1: banking privacy
Testing the Gem with a complex banking journey for a "Stealth Mode" feature returned sharp critiques. It identified where common inputs created high motor effort, contrasting sharply with user wants and needs. It also flagged critical "Review and Recycle" gaps where the system state was unclear.
Identified Gaps
Experiment 2: instant iterative prototyping
Dry technical documents for a recommendation feed were transformed into actionable logic. The Gem highlighted "Input" gaps, showing users lose agency without transparency. Crucially, the AI generated functional HTML UI code from a static User-Input table cell in seconds.
The future: accelerating workflows
The true power of the BUJ Gem lies in its potential to automate the often challenging work of applying requirements to design. The workflow accurately moves from requirement to analysis, and then evaluation to prototype. We can drastically alter our iteration speed and how we allocate our cognitive load. This keeps the human focused on solving real problems for real people.
Iteration Velocity Multiplier
Comparing manual design loops to the AI-assisted workflow.
UX Process Focus Shift
How team capability scores change with the BUJ Gem.
Time Allocation Distribution
With the Gem handling requirement analysis and initial prototyping, teams can dedicate more of their time to understanding our enterprise-consumer relationships and actual user testing and review.
Conclusion
AI is a great sparring partner for design thinking. It finds hidden blockers, maintains enterprise advantage, and most importantly, keeps the user at the absolute center of the cycle. The future of design is not drawing more boxes; it's about rapid, intelligent iteration and prototyping.
Discover if the BUJ framework with AI capability is right for you. Read more about Pat Godfrey's Basic User Journey tool.