How AI helped me as a UX designer with new accessibility needs.
What happened?
On Christmas morning 2023, I had a cardiac arrest and died.
This is the second time I’ve had a cardiac arrest, but the first time I’ve died.
I was dead for 30 minutes, when they managed to resuscitate me, but the fact that my blood hadn’t been flowing properly through my body left me with some damage.
I’ve been slowly progressing back to health, physically I am in the best shape I’ve been in for 25 years, but returning a brain to health is not as easy. Not impossible, but not easy.
What changed?
How this kind of injury affects me.
After being starved of oxygen for so long, I suffered some damage to my brain. My ability to shift information from working memory to long term memory has been affected.
How it affected me?
I found that much of my time in a day was spent making plans before meetings, capturing notes during and then prescribing those notes into summaries for reference.
That meant I was in capturing mode and not truly listening. It affected the quality of my work because I found I went into creation mode when none of the team were around to bounce ideas off. Without others to bounce ideas off, it affected the quality of concepts, and ultimately slowed down creative progression.
The whole experience affected my confidence massively.
As a person I was far quieter, I did not engage as much as I did previously because the embarrassment that comes along with this kind of injury, hits you in several places, most specifically confidence.
I was asking myself constantly what my value was in projects, if people had to keep repeating problems to me. Rather than embarrass myself, I would shut down and stay quiet.
That’s the opposite of what a good designer should be doing.
A good designer should be asking questions, we should be comfortable to sound stupid, because if we don’t understand it, our audience never will.
Why did I first start thinking about AI?
I was thinking that if I could get an AI to help with the load in meetings, then I could focus on the things I’m good at. With this as my “new normal”, I would be able to rebuild my confidence.
How do I use AI?
This is where Copilot came in.
Copilot is Microsoft’s AI, which has been designed to be used across Windows, in Teams, or in Internet Explorer.
Copilot changed it for me, from transcribing notes to effectively creating bullets and action lists for me off the back of meetings and calls.
It meant my time reverted back to value rather than capture.
Instead of my day being heavily vested in what I’ve learned, I could return to creating value in my sphere of excellence. Storylines. I could get back to really listening to my customers, users & team members.
Starting was easy, I asked Copilot how I could use it to effectively support me and it gave me some instructions on where to begin.
Who else was affected, what can we do to facilitate them?
When things like this happen, it’s never just you that is affected.
My family, my friends, my colleagues and my customers would all be affected by this to varying degrees. I needed tools to help lessen the load on my support networks, as well as re-affirm the confidence my customers have in me.
How does AI help these people as well?
My strategy, which revolved around family & work, was to become self-reliant as fast as possible. AI offered me this opportunity.
I used it to ensure I was in touch with all the important people and factions in my life. Ensuring I was taking my medication, making my appointments, and recording outcomes as much as possible.
These are difficult things to do without a working memory.
What else do I use AI for?
Since then I have found other uses for it.
I use it like Google to mine data or find examples. I can start projects with concepts or quickly build a persona. For example, I asked Copilot to make a persona for a Bus driver called Bob and Copilot complies in seconds.
Whilst it’s not a persona I would use straight away, it’s a start that I can add context and volume to.
What can we learn?
I still make mistakes, same as I ever did, but as I keep working on this method, it gets easier to manage. As the AI learns it becomes more accurate to my needs.
Design has taught me to be more empathetic to individual needs, but I had no idea how much something like this would affect my life, the impact has been massive. I’ve had to double the amount of work I put in every day to deliver to a standard I previously found easy. I have to navigate confidence issues and worries about missing something all the time.
Although I doubt these will ever truly go away, Copilot is the kind of reassurance I need to do my job to the best of my ability.
It truly is my Copilot.
