Why it matters?

There’s been a massive flurry of Gen AI tools this year, but a lot of them i don’t think add any direct value for my day-to-day workflow or solve any direct problems, but the ones that do can really make your day job as a designer a lot simpler.

I’ve made a post going through tools I’ve actually been using that have helped boost my productivity as a product designer and can help you out too!

Descript for showcasing your work

It is crucial to gain visibility and showcase your work as a designer within the organization. After putting in all the effort into your work, it would be a shame not to take that final step of sharing it with others. Videos are great for this!

Get traction on your work

There is really nothing to lose by doing this. Before taking on more work, set aside some time at the end of each project to share your work. For larger projects, I personally record a walkthrough where I go through the designs and explain the design rationale. This documentation is helpful for future reference.

Editing made simple

Descript makes recording and editing a breeze. You can edit videos just like a document. Removing text directly removes that portion from the video, and you can even replace words using an AI-generated voice or your AI voice.

Descript offers numerous built-in AI features to assist you. For example, it can automatically remove filler words and create studio sound effects for your voice. You can even create an AI voice of yourself, allowing you to generate transcripts without having to do any recordings.

Vision work with Descript

When developing the future vision for work Events, we used a generative AI theme. I made a video to share highlights and provide more information about the project. The video used Descript AI voice to explain key concepts from the vision. This approach created more excitement for the vision.

Notion AI - Unblock and write with confidence

When creating a vision at work, it's important to storyboard customer user journeys and have a narrative to share.

I used Notion AI to outline the story, which was a great starting point. Notion created a story about Pixie organizing an All Hands event, highlighting the problems she faced and incorporating design and vision ideas we made in the sprint. Notion's initial outline was fantastic.

I worked with my PM and Content designer to refine the story and align it with the vision. This helped unblock us faster.

Helps me write with confidence

I also rely on Notion AI to assist with work-related posts, messages to colleagues, and content ideas, writing is something i enjoy doing, but i feel way more confident in my writing with Notion AI. It's worth the subscription fee.

Midjourney - Create compelling visuals

Midjourney has been great for creating compelling images for presentation decks, posts at work, and setting up design sprint boards.

It is particularly useful when visualizing futuristic concepts or specific themes, such as a cyberpunk city. The results achieved with Midjourney are amazing with minimal effort required.

It can add excitement to your sprint or presentation. I even ran an entire design sprint using only images generated from Midjourney.

Magician by Diagram

For automating some of the basic Figma tasks Magician is great for this, you can get suggestions for content, create images icons and more.

Content suggestions are always great, i feel like writing Lorem ipsum is always a bit too easy and simple. It doesn’t provide enough depth to your design. Having a bit of content can really help people understand what you’re trying to do.

I feel like a lot of the stuff will be embedded directly into Figma soon.

Bonus - Google Bard

The progress of Google Bard has been pretty impressive, and I have to say, it has totally outperformed Chat GPT. It can give you answers with way more depth and value.

I absolutely love using it for all sorts of stuff like getting fitness tips, cooking up a storm, planning my next adventure, reaching out to customer service, and so much more!

You can now integrate Bard with your Google Workspace and ask it questions related to your emails and docs which is so cool!

Donate and support Palestine 🇵🇸

The war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank are nothing short of genocide. Innocent mothers and children are being killed, and there is a denial of basic aid, the use of white phosphorous bombs

Visiting the West Bank first-hand earlier this year really changes one's perspective on things. Seeing the videos and pictures is awful, but experiencing it in real life really touches the heart.

We can all contribute by donating and supporting the people in Palestine.