GenAI Fundamentals for UX Designers + Researchers
What you'll learn
- Learn core principles of responsible GenAI design that ensure our products serve all users equally + equitably.
- Success factors unique to Machine Learning (ML) products that UX + Product Designers and their teams should adopt
- Guidance on research to determine what kinds of problems are best solved by AI, and where human control should remain central.
- Determining when AI features are appropriate for users — and when they aren't
- Identifying when Automation (AI does the task for users) or Augmentation (help them do it better) is more appropriate.
- Designing the reward function and appropriately considering the balance between false positives and false negatives.
- Essential factors to consider when evaluating the reward function.
- How to weigh necessary, unavoidable tradeoffs between precision and recall, which is key to shaping an AI user experience.
- Designing for fairness and inclusion, from objectives to datasets to guidance on bias testing.
- Designing for generative variability: how do we present multiple, varied outputs to users — and how do we guide them in selecting the best one?
- Designing for multiple outputs: how do we help users filter and highlight differences between outputs?
- Designing for imperfections: how do we empower users to manage + mitigate imperfections and designing with contextual sensitivity?
- Designing for confidence: how do we design confidence scoring to properly evaluate output quality and increase user trust?
- Rules and examples for applying confidence scores.
- Designing for co-creation: how to we design co-creation processes where both the user and the AI can make adjustments?
- Designing for generic controls: using "temperature" to control the number of outputs and the degree of variability in those outputs.
- Designing for domain-specific controls, such as encoder-decoder models, semantic sliders and prompt engineering.
- Designing for prompt engineering: enabling and guiding users to effectively use multiple types of conversational prompts.
- Designing for exploration: incorporating flexibility, feedback, transparency and error handling/expectation management.
- Designing for choice, feedback, transparency + safety: centering users as active, empowered participants in the creation process.
- Designing for mental models: orienting users to generative variability, teaching effective use and teaching the AI about the user.
- Designing for explanation, understanding + trust: providing clear rationales for outputs, using friction to curb over-reliance and showing imperfections.
- Designing against harm: understanding the critical ways irresponsible AI design can harm people.
- Designing against hazardous outputs: discrimination, exclusion, toxicity, misinformation, deep fakes, IP theft and more.
- Mitigating harm with a Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) process, integrated with an Agile or Lean development process.
Requirements
- None. GenAI is stil extremely new to the world of UX, so this fundamentals course is meant to get you on solid ground fast, no matter your experience.
Description
Protect and grow your career: Learn to design GenAI-enabled products
The UX and Product design landscape is evolving—and AI is leading the charge. If you're a designer, UXer, or product developer, you can't afford to be left behind. Generative AI is not just a buzzword; it's becoming the backbone of the next generation of user experiences. And without a deep understanding of how to design AI-powered products, your skill set risks becoming obsolete.
This course is for you if you want to:
Stay relevant in an industry that’s rapidly integrating AI into every aspect of product development and feature sets.
Be the asset your employer relies on—not the UXer or designer left off key projects because you lack the necessary skills.
Lead the future of UX and design rather than have it dictated to you by engineers and product managers.
Why you must start learning the fundamentals of GenAI product design now
AI isn’t just an optional add-on anymore. It’s the next fundamental shift in product design—just like when UX and UI became indispensable. Here’s the reality:
Employers want designers who understand how to design user-centered GenAI experiences that are useful, usable, valuable, and trustworthy. Without this skill, your job security and opportunities will shrink.
Product improvement initiatives and AI integration projects are happening in every major company, from simple voice and chatbot interfaces to workflow-based conversational experiences. The people who know how to design these experiences are the ones who will be chosen for leadership roles.
AI is the new frontier in UX and product design. Just as front-end coding knowledge became essential for UXers, understanding emerging design trends for GenAI — and how to design and evaluate AI-enabled products — is the next career progression.
If you don’t understand AI-enabled design, you won’t be part of these key projects. Your value will diminish—both to your current employer and in the eyes of potential future employers.
What you’ll learn in this course
Master the fundamentals of designing AI-powered products
Learn the principles that guide effective, responsible design for AI. I’ll teach you the fundamental principles and approaches behind experiences that blend the power of AI with intuitive, human-centered design. From initial investigation and research to designing features, functionality and evaluation metrics to gauge usability and measure trust, I'll tackle all the core areas you need to know about.
Why it matters: AI is about more than automation. It’s about delivering useful and valuable user experiences that meet both user needs and business goals.
Create ethical, trustworthy AI-driven products
I’ll show you how to build AI products that users trust—and that won’t perpetuate bias or misinformation. You’ll learn the ethical considerations you need to think through and how to design with fairness and transparency in mind.
Why it matters: Building trust is crucial in AI. Companies are investing in AI solutions that don’t just work but are ethical and inclusive. Your ability to design these systems will set you apart.
Understand the basics of designing for key GenAI attributes like generative variability and tradeoffs between precision and recall.
Generative variability is the heart of GenAI. I'll walk you through two critical questions we, as UXers and designers, have to answer: (1) how do we present multiple, varied outputs to users and (2) how do we guide them in selecting the best one?
As a UX or product designer, one of the key decisions you’ll face when working with AI systems is how to balance precision and recall. I'll dig intot both concepts and walk you through how to design that balance appropriately.
Why it matters: Generative variability is the heart of GenAI, and designing for it requires an approach that's very different from the products we typically tackle. In particular, precision and recall define how accurate and thorough your AI’s results will be — and getting the balance right directly impacts UX and user trust.
Turn AI into a business asset for your clients or employers
Design AI systems that do more than just function—they deliver real business value. I’ll teach you how to align AI-driven products with business objectives, ensuring that the user experience drives results.
Why it matters: Your ability to create AI-enabled products that solve real business challenges will make you a valuable asset to your employer.
Be a leader in AI-enabled UX and product design
As AI continues to reshape the design industry, you’ll be equipped to lead AI-focused design projects, taking your career to the next level. No more waiting on engineers to explain AI to you. You’ll be the one leading the collaborative charge to determine how AI best fits into product design.
Why it matters: Leaders in this field don’t wait for opportunities—they create them. Position yourself as a forward-thinking designer who is driving AI adoption and innovation.
Who this course is for:
New UX and Product Designers: If you’re starting out and want to make your career trajectory more stable and secure, this course will give you the foundation to be an asset to your employer from day one.
Experienced UXers, Product Designers and Product Developers: If you’re already working in the industry and want to stay competitive and lead the next wave of innovation, this course will teach you how to begin integrating AI product design into your current design skill set — and to have informed, productive conversations with software engineers and data scientists on GenAI projects.
I've included a massive GenAI UX workbook you can use on real-world projects.
You can download and use this 164-page companion workbook to use both as practice and to help you through the process of designing for GenAI in your daily work as well. Use the guidance and 89 exercises across 22 mission-critical topics in GenAI design for any real-world GenAI projects that come your way — the exercises here are designed to help you through the process, from concept to execution.
Who this course is for:
- New UX and Product Designers: If you’re starting out and want to make your career trajectory more stable and secure, this course will give you the foundation to be an asset to your employer from day one.
- Experienced UXers, Product Designers and Product Developers: If you’re already working in the industry and want to stay competitive and lead the next wave of innovation, this course will teach you how to begin integrating AI product design into your current design skill set — and to have informed, productive conversations with software engineers and data scientists on GenAI projects.
- UX Researchers, UX Writers, Product Managers and anyone wondering what they need to know in order to play a role in designing GenAI-driven products.
- Practitioners of all kinds who are new to the world of GenAI — and don't know where to start learning about it.
Instructor
For more than 30 years, I've helped organizations build better products and helped the people behind those products become more effective at what they do.
Over 400,000 students around the world have taken my courses across multiple learning platforms, but the number I'm proudest of isn't an enrollment statistic. It's the number of students who've told me they finally understand why things happen the way they do inside product teams, and how to navigate them with confidence.
My career has taken me from startups to Fortune 100 companies, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and federal government agencies. I've worked with companies like Google, Meta, Broadridge, Kroll, Johns Hopkins and many others, as well as organizations including the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Those experiences shaped how I teach.
Most courses focus on process: the steps, the deliverables, the frameworks, the tools.
Those things do matter — but they're rarely what determines whether a product succeeds.
The biggest challenges I've seen over three decades aren't usually technical. They're misunderstandings. Misaligned priorities. Poor communication. Unclear goals. Decisions made without evidence. Teams working hard... but not together.
That's why my courses are different.
Yes, you'll learn UX, UI, product design, research, prototyping and strategy. But you'll also learn how to think critically, communicate your ideas, influence decisions, collaborate with stakeholders and solve the kinds of messy, real-world problems that aren't covered in most textbooks.
Everything I teach comes from actual projects, not hypothetical examples. When I explain a concept, it's because I've watched it succeed (or fail) with real teams building real products under real business constraints.
I'm also the author or co-author of multiple books on User Experience and Product Design, including The User Experience Team of One (Second Edition), published by Rosenfeld Media. I've spent more than two decades speaking at conferences around the world, but teaching remains my favorite part of what I do because it gives me the opportunity to help people build careers — and not just products.
Whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this work for years, my goal is the same: to give you practical skills, better judgment and a deeper understanding of how successful products (and successful careers) are really built.
I'm glad you're here. And I am honored to be part of your journey.