HI-FI PROTOTYPE
OBJECTIVE
The goal of this phase is to create the most refined, professional and complete version of the app. This prototype has undergone a heuristic evaluation by my peers to expose any process or flow issues and offer a fresh perspective. They provided feedback to contribute to the improvement of the lo-fi prototype to be applied to the high fidelity prototype. This prototype contains completed features, buttons, and visuals to offer users the AI elements defined to solve the issues faced when decorating their homes. These AI features include AI photo generation, AI stylist ChatBot, and AI data analysis/funneling to direct users to market purchasing.
AI USAGE
For this final prototype, AI was utilized in AI generate images. While it was extremely valuable during all of the previous phases, this phase requires more attention designing and visualizing from the designer. This is solely focused on the creation of the app, so AI isn’t used in a very detailed or large scale manner.
When refining the prototype, I needed AI generated photos of blank rooms and examples of room decoration styles. One moment I utilize AI in a unique way is attaching a photo of a blank room it had previously generated and asking it to regenerate it from the perspective of different camera lenses. Below is an example of a prompt:
“Can you turn this photo into a .5 lens view, almost like a fish eye lens”
Before:
After:
Despite the AI use being minor in this phase, I spent many hours manually creating, adjusting, and refining the prototype with the feedback from peers, my professor, and personal observation. AI has been an extremely useful tool in all of the elements leading up to the prototyping and has proven to be the back-bone to that foundation. With the detailed accounts of information ChatGPT analyzed, highlighted, and provided me, I was able to easily and efficiently create a prototype that hit all of the goals of the project. The only room left is for improvement to the app flow because the app successfully has every feature it is supposed to.
CHALLENGES
While using AI, the only challenge I faced during this phase was the photo generation. Sometimes AI can tend to regenerate the same photo multiple times despite the changes I make to the prompt. It became tricky when I was using the same chat stream for the same photo because if I wanted to regenerate the same kind of photo with more change I would need to create an entirely new chat stream. AI also sometimes would create something that was very different than my prompt which would mean it requires an extremely specific and detailed prompt. This takes time and practice to know what language and direction AI responds to.
BENEFITS
The benefits of using AI for photo generation are that it cuts the design time down. Instead of having to go search the internet for a photo that works, is without watermarks, and is high quality I can simply prompt ChatGPT to generate a photo. It is especially useful when the photo I require is niche or harder to find. This allows me more freedom and opportunity within the visual generative aspect. This alone supports the benefit that my app will provide users to solve their real world problem. There is so much freedom in visual image generation.
REFLECTION
During this phase, AI was extremely helpful with quickly generating images especially since my app is very image heavy. This app requires a heaving image generation processing engine, which is helpful because I was able to learn how that engine functions. In regards to this phase, there isn’t anything I would have done differently. This is more of a learning curve in the sense of me learning what language AI responds best to and what language I should avoid. More experimentation will help me and the AI system grow. I will continue to learn it, and it will continue to learn me.
If I had to do anything differently, I would send my app through AI for a heuristic evaluation of its own. Based on the comprehensive information ChatGPT has proven to have regarding user experience within apps I feel that this would have been a valuable tool I could have utilized. It would have given me more feedback than maybe my peers could have given.