Conducting pre-research with AI agent personas: Pressure-testing concepts for expert workflows
Summary
Designers in complex domains like finance, healthcare, or government are often asked to design for expert workflows they barely understand, while their subject-matter experts are too busy to join every iteration. This case study shows how niche AI “agent personas” became an always-available, domain-aware first pass on ideas—helping a UX professional in fintech to pressure-test concepts, understand upstream/downstream impacts, and arrive at better prototypes faster. In this work, AI serves explicitly as a pre-research layer, not a substitute for real users, formal research, or usability testing, ensuring that human insight remains at the center of the design process.
More Videos
"Will you learn to let go? Better yet, will you let go?"
Victor UdoewaBeyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
March 26, 2024
"Accessible experiences are for everyone—they make things better for everyone, not just people with disabilities."
Samuel ProulxInvisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought
December 3, 2024
"AI isn't good at context yet; it may insist it's a B or a 13, but not that it could be both depending on view."
David ConradThe Feeling of Data
September 14, 2023
"You have to give oppressed groups tools to fight discrimination, or you leave them in a place of victimization."
Yolanda RankinBlack Feminist Epistemology as a Critical Framework for Equitable Design
March 11, 2021
"Errors in form fields should alert users immediately but also allow them to explore details at their own pace to avoid cognitive overload."
Sam ProulxDesigning For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
December 10, 2021
"Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued, not about being nice or avoiding disagreement."
Alla WeinbergWorkers Are Sick of Change: The Cure is Psychological Safety
June 6, 2023
"We put high-fidelity designs in Mural so stakeholders unfamiliar with Figma can still comment and interact."
Erika FlowersIntroduction to MURAL for UX
June 11, 2021
"We created a decision tree to help junior staff decide which stakeholder requests to triage and which to respond to directly."
Catherine BlizzardUsing Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
March 10, 2022
"Recruiting kids really means recruiting adults as their proxies and gatekeepers."
Mila Kuznetsova Lucy DentonHow Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices
March 9, 2022
