Stateful AI Copilot Design

This unit explores design strategies and interaction patterns for AI-powered, stateful SaaS copilots, including dedicated full-screen interfaces, reference views, and specialized model personas. Students will examine how AI augmentation reshapes UX techniques, practice creating concrete design concepts, and assess ethical, privacy, and trust trade-offs to prepare for prototyping and evaluation in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze user workflows and context requirements to identify opportunities and specifications for stateful AI copilot features, including persistence, context handoff, and reference management
• Apply UX design patterns to produce wireframes or low-fidelity prototypes for dedicated full-screen copilots and embedded reference interfaces that support augmented user tasks
• Demonstrate a design concept that integrates a specialized or fine-tuned conversational model (or persona) for a defined user scenario and justify persona, prompt, and interaction choices
• Evaluate trade-offs among general-purpose models, fine-tuned/specialized models, and system-level state management with respect to usability, privacy, ethical concerns, and user trust