Adobe Internship

Building equity and accessibility into Generative AI text-to-image tools

During my time at Adobe, I worked as the first Experience Design intern on the Product Equity team. I was tasked with considering exactly how well Firefly helped creatives with their processes, especially through the lens of equity and accessibility.

ROLE

Experience Designer
Product Strategy

TIMELINE

May 2023 - Aug 2023

TOOLS

Figma
Adobe XD

TEAM

Timothy Bardlavens
Annika Muehlbrandt
Es Braziel

BACKGROUND

Generative AI is making creativity easier... or is it?

Firefly is Adobe’s generative AI web application, committed to be being a responsible approach to the emerging generative AI boom. It can be used for the creation of images, text effects, color palettes, and aims to support and improve the creative process of all creators.

However, is Firefly really meeting every creative where they are, and truly making the creative process easier for everyone?

Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Through feedback collected from Firefly's beta users, social media forums about generative creative tools on the market at large, we identified two main problems with the existing mode of prompt building in Generative AI tools.

PAIN POINT 01

Requirement of written literacy

People with cognitive and intellectual disabilities are struggling to use generative technologies due to varying levels of lower literacy, the inability to input complex prompts that reflect their intent, and other accessibility issues.

PAIN POINT 02

Learning curve of prompt engineering

The way prompt engineering is designed today requires deep knowledge of language models and how they will interpret any given written prompt, making it inaccessible to far more people than just those with cognitive and intellectual disabilities.

How might we enable all users to craft effective prompts
for generative AI without (prompt) literacy?

MY DESIGN PRINCIPLES (and awesome team)

Product Equity, and what we stand for.

Adobe's Product Equity team a new and nimble cross-disciplinary team that focuses on committed to changing the way products are built within the company and, ideally and over time, across the industry. We examine product research, design, and development processes throughout the company, and partner with teams throughout product development lifecycles.

The Product Equity team helps make decisions that consider the full spectrum of gender, race, age, ethnicity, ability, culture, and all other human variabilities.

Product Equity Illustration by Abby Kwon

✨This project is currently under NDA.✨
Reach out for more details about the outcome my project!
My process is summarized below~

MY DESIGN STAGES + DELIVERABLES

How might we make it easier for people with cognitive
and intellectual disabilities to use generative tech in their creative practice?
And in turn, make prompt building easier for everyone?

PHASE 01

Understanding Adobe's creatives

Weeks of primary and secondary research to understand what assistive tools creatives with cognitive and intellectual diabilities utilize in their creative practice, and where generative tech can assist.

PHASE 02

Introducing assistive features

In close collaboration with researchers and stakeholders, iterating on prototypes derived from collected research findings to incorporate assistive tools.

PHASE 03

Structural product changes

Further iteration and dismantling the entire model of prompt building to propose a new framework of approaching accessibility. Showcase to entire company design org.

REFLECTION

✋ Equitable design is better design

Good design is design that is able to apply to all. Focusing and solving the needs of a specific group can improve the experience of everyone, and no audience is too auxilary. The work that the Product Equity team is doing at Adobe is transformative and pionerring in ways that I hope will grow and set the status quo across the entire industry.

🛠 Autonomy and advocating for myself

As the first design intern on my team, I had both the opportunity and chellenge of carving out my own role and position within the company and taking agency over my work. I learned how to establish strong support networks for myself and find mentorship whenever I needed it, and in turn met so many amazing people and learned a lot of self efficacy. I've since been overwhelmed by the amount of kindness and support shown to me by so many people I’ve met.