AI-Driven Parenting: How I built my 6-year-old a reading buddy to save my sanity
Ever find yourself dreaming of a world where your design skills could magically solve your parenting woes? My obsession with process optimization has, to my husband’s mixed feelings of excitement and dismay, spilled over into our personal life. So, after the 17th time my video-game-loving 6-year-old asked me to read him a quest on Bugsnax, a lightbulb went off. ChatGPT could definitely solve my problem, but could I, a simple UX designer, build something end-to-end that involved API work…without a developer?
Picture this: a world where your child can game without turning you into their personal Rosetta Stone. That’s the utopia I envisioned. So, armed with more optimism than coding knowledge, I set out to create what I affectionately called the “Please Read This, So I Don’t Have to” bot. The idea was simple: my son takes a photo of his game screen with his iPad, and my makeshift AI buddy reads it back to him. Simple, right?
Preface: I’m no stranger to ChatGPT. It’s been my daily companion for a while, perpetually open among my other 30 tabs. (I consider myself an unofficial Chrome performance tester.) I’ve dabbled in AI-driven projects before (see here), but this endeavour was a notch up — call it Level 2 in my journey toward career augmentation. It required me to engage with the designer’s enigma, the API. (We know it exists, we know it does…something. That’s about it.)
With OpenAI’s API as my Excalibur, I dove headfirst into the realm of “coding.” I say “coding” because, let’s be honest, my programming skills are as robust as a chocolate teapot. But lo and behold, after a montage-worthy 24 hours filled with too much Coca Cola, determination, and a surprising lack of tears, the bot came to life. I discovered the real reason developers love their job (hint: it's not the mountains of cash)…The sheer joy I felt seeing my app work and witnessing the delight on my son’s face was priceless.
Did my 6-year-old son grasp the magnitude of this victory? Hardly.
Did it buy me a few precious minutes of peace? Absolutely.
More importantly, it taught me that AI just might be the Robin to my Batman, the Chewbacca to my Han Solo — essentially, AI is the perfect sidekick for designers who dream big but code little.
The moral of this story? Don’t fear AI; embrace it. It’s not here to steal our jobs or make us obsolete. Instead, it’s the trusty sidekick that helps us bring our wildest ideas to life, no coding degree required.
So, to my fellow creatives navigating the wilds of design and parenthood: AI might just be the secret ingredient we’ve been looking for. Not only can it transform our professional lives, but it can also give us a fighting chance at keeping our sanity intact as we juggle design, diapers, and everything in between.
The future is now, and it’s powered by AI.
Now, if only AI could potty-train my toddler…
