Creative AI: Designing with Freedom & Innovation
This was a truly unique project I had the opportunity to work on for several months with the Undabot agile team, for CLIQ Digital.
Designing for AI with AI
This project was all about speed and creativity. Working in an agile team, my main task was to design two new AI apps per sprint, alongside creating the "Best of AI" portal—a hub for showcasing AI apps—right at the start of the project.
The goal? Be fast, and efficient, and deliver as many apps as possible in just a few months. To keep up with the pace, I leaned on a variety of AI-powered tools and "tricks" to speed up my workflow and stay productive.
If you're expecting a textbook UX process, this wasn’t that kind of project. Still, it was quite enjoyable! The Project Owner gave me free rein to explore, experiment, and do "whatever I want"—and I fully embraced that freedom.
The portal
For the portal, I envisioned a neon-inspired aesthetic. Once I stumbled upon a stunning video intro graphic, everything started falling into place. My design was partly inspired by the VR game Beat Saber—a personal favorite—and the general retro neon vibe I’ve always loved.
The portal showcased 25 apps (5 per category), but our initial goal was to design only 10. To speed things up, I leaned on ChatGPT for creative input—generating names and descriptions for apps that might never actually be developed.
I was particularly drawn to gradients and gradient-bordered elements, which gave the portal its vibrant, futuristic feel. It took some extra effort from the front-end developers to bring these elements to life, but they were up for the challenge, and the results were worth it.
Although we were happy with the portal, life had other plans. Midway through, priorities shifted, and we merged Best of AI into an existing client’s streaming service. This change also brought multiple revisions to the payment and subscription flows, keeping us on our toes.
AI apps
Once the portal was complete, the next step was to start designing the apps. To ensure I fully understood the Project Owner's vision, I created a user flow for the MVP.
The main flow for the AI apps was straightforward:
Select the App
Add Your Info/Preferences
Generate Results
Preview Results
Payment & Registration
View Full Results
This simple yet effective structure made it easy to develop multiple apps efficiently while maintaining a consistent user experience.
3 out of 10
There were 10 fully designed apps for "work and fun", but I’ve decided to share 3 of my personal favorites.
So, here they are...
Jolly Joker
Designing Jolly Joker felt like pure fun—like being a child again. I wanted it to embody both the chaos of a circus and the humor of stand-up comedy, all in one. I loved that I could use the playful, goofy font Bangers to match the vibe.
The “wacky” border was something I tested in code to ensure the front-end developers could bring it to life, and they nailed it. Designing this app was an absolute blast from start to finish!
Jolly Joker flow
As mentioned, the main flow was quite simple:
Start the app
Select a custom or random joke
Select joke preferences
Writing a joke
Joke preview/payment
Enjoy the full joke!
This straightforward process made it easy for users to dive in and have fun with the app.
Fully responsive
All the apps were designed to be fully responsive. I really enjoyed the challenge of designing for different resolutions, with each one presenting its own unique set of opportunities and constraints.
My Fairy Tales
My Fairy Tales was such a dreamy app to work on. It was like creating a personalized bedtime story for a child—completely customizable to their preferences, even allowing heroes to be named after them or their pets.
I had so much fun designing this app, and I thought about incorporating a touch of skeuomorphism by making it feel like a “real” book. The challenge was adapting this concept across all resolutions, especially when considering how to make the pages feel "longer" or "shorter"—which doesn’t happen in real books, of course! But in the end, I think it turned out beautifully.
Once again, the frontend developers had a bit of extra work, but they tackled it with enthusiasm. I made sure to document and test everything for them before they began, so the process was smooth. I’m really grateful for their dedication—they embraced the challenge wholeheartedly.
Once the app was developed, it was amazing to see it scale across different resolutions and even more fun to test it out by reading through all the stories.
My Fairy Tales flow
Start the app
Select a preference
Read more about the preference
Writing the story
Story preview/payment
Enjoy reading in full-screen story mode
The results
The results were an absolute blast—ranging from hilarious to heartwarming. Below are examples of the app in Desktop, iPad, and Full-Story Mode iPad versions.
Faceswap
Faceswap was an absolute blast to design. It was the first app I worked on in the batch of 10, and out of the 25 apps in the entire portal, it was the only one where I had no clear vision for its look or feel. I decided to approach it like a tool, focusing more on functionality than visual impact.
Looking back, that turned out to be the right choice, as it quickly became one of my favorites.
Faceswap flow
Start the app
Upload an image / take a photo
Review photo
Select preset
Wait a bit :)
Your image is ready
Result screen
I really enjoyed designing the result screen, especially how the image size would adjust based on the provided dimensions. A 1:1 ratio was the minimum, but it would resize within the box for other ratios, like 3:2, and so on. It was fun to design and document these variations.
That's AI, Folks!
This was one of the most unique projects I’ve had the chance to work on. Once again, I loved the creative freedom I had, designing from my inspiration. It's one of those rare projects where everything falls into place, and I had incredible support from the agile team who embraced the design challenges. The client loved everything we did.
It’s also funny how much AI helped along the way—from using ChatGPT to image generators in perfecting those graphics. Well, that’s AI, folks...
