AI Workshop
Design Thinking with AI: Workshop
Bring together the best of human creativity and AI capability to tackle real challenges and generate ideas that are worth pursuing.
A hands-on workshop that weaves AI tools into every stage of the design thinking process, helping teams move faster, explore more boldly, and keep people at the centre of everything they create.
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The challenge
Design thinking is powerful. AI makes it faster, richer, and more ambitious.
Design thinking gives teams a brilliant structure for tackling complexity. But running through empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test in a single session still takes real effort, and the quality of ideas depends heavily on what the team already knows. AI changes that equation.
- Research and insight gathering can take days rather than hours
- Ideation sessions often recycle familiar ideas within the team's existing knowledge
- Prototyping gets stuck at wireframes and word documents
- The richest creative moments happen too late in the process to act on them
- Teams leave workshops energised but without the tools to keep moving
This workshop shows teams how to use AI at every stage of design thinking, compressing timelines, expanding creative range, and producing more tangible outputs in a single session.
Who it's for
Who this workshop is for
Built for teams who already believe in human-centred design and want to understand how AI can help them do it better, faster, and at greater scale.
Innovation and design teams
Teams that run design sprints, innovation sessions, or human-centred design projects and want to understand where AI fits into their process.
Product and UX teams
Teams building products and services who want to use AI to accelerate research, broaden ideation, and prototype concepts more quickly.
Service design and CX teams
Teams responsible for customer experience and service design who want to use AI to enrich empathy work and generate more imaginative service concepts.
Strategy and transformation teams
Teams working on strategic challenges who want a structured creative process to generate and pressure-test ideas with the support of AI tools.
Facilitators and innovation leads
People who run workshops and design thinking programmes and want to build their confidence in integrating AI tools into facilitated sessions.
Organisations new to design thinking
Teams with no prior design thinking experience who want a practical introduction, with AI tools giving them an immediate creative boost from day one.
Learning outcomes
What teams gain from the workshop
Participants leave with both a deeper understanding of human-centred design and the practical ability to use AI tools to make their process sharper and more productive.
- A clear understanding of how AI tools fit into each stage of design thinking
- Hands-on experience using AI for research synthesis, ideation, and rapid prototyping
- A richer set of ideas than a traditional workshop would typically produce
- Confidence in where human judgment matters most, and where AI genuinely helps
- One or more developed concepts ready to take into testing or further development
- A practical playbook for using AI in future design and innovation work
The process
How the Design Thinking with AI workshop works
We follow the five stages of design thinking, with AI tools woven into each one to deepen insight, expand possibility, and speed up the journey from idea to concept.
Field research
Gain empathy with your user group and collect real observations. Use AI to rapidly synthesise research data, surface hidden patterns, and stress-test your assumptions before moving on.
Form insights
Develop novel points of view that focus innovation on what really matters to people. Use AI to reframe observations from multiple angles and uncover insights the team might otherwise miss.
Focus the challenge
Translate your top insights into specific "How Might We…" questions. Use AI to sharpen the framing, explore alternative angles, and make sure each question opens up genuinely creative territory.
Generate ideas
Generate as many creative ideas as possible for each "How Might We…" question. Combine AI-generated stimulus with the team's own thinking to produce a far richer set of ideas than a traditional brainstorm would.
Prototype
Make ideas tangible so you can quickly get feedback and test assumptions. Use AI to generate copy, visuals, user journeys, and service concepts that go well beyond sticky notes and sketches — then iterate rapidly.
Implement
Explore the feasibility and viability of your solutions to build a compelling case for further development. Use AI to pressure-test assumptions, model scenarios, and draft the narrative that takes your best concepts forward.
Workshop structure
Example workshop agenda
Half-day workshop
- Introduction to design thinking and AI
- Empathise and define with AI support
- AI-assisted ideation session
- Rapid concept development and next steps
Full-day workshop
- Design thinking and AI: setting the scene
- Empathy and research synthesis with AI
- Defining the challenge, reframed with AI
- AI-powered ideation and concept generation
- Prototyping with AI tools
- Concept review, testing considerations, and commitments
All workshops are tailored to your team's challenge and context. Remote, hybrid, and in-person delivery available.
Your facilitators
About Treehouse Innovation
Treehouse Innovation is a specialist innovation consultancy with deep experience in design thinking, human-centred design, and creative facilitation. We've run workshops for leadership teams, product teams, and professional services organisations across sectors including law, finance, higher education, and technology.
This workshop brings together our expertise in design thinking facilitation and our practical knowledge of AI tools, creating a session that is rigorous, creative, and genuinely hands-on. We don't just talk about using AI in design thinking. We use it in the room, together, on a real challenge that matters to your team.
Example outcomes
What teams typically achieve
What changes when AI becomes part of your design thinking process.
From safe, predictable ideas to genuinely surprising concepts your team wouldn't have reached alone
From rough sticky notes to rich, testable prototypes with copy, visuals, and user journeys
From user research to a prioritised concept with a clear case for development — in a single session
Industries
Industries we work with
We adapt our workshops to the specific context of your team and sector, using examples and challenges that are genuinely relevant to the work you do.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Do participants need to know design thinking already?
No. The workshop works equally well for teams new to design thinking and those who use it regularly. We build in enough context at the start that everyone can participate fully, and the AI tools give newcomers an immediate creative boost.
Do participants need prior AI experience?
No prior technical knowledge is needed. We guide participants through the tools step by step. The focus is on using AI creatively to support the design thinking process, not on understanding how it works under the hood.
How long is the workshop?
We offer half-day and full-day formats. The full-day version allows teams to move through all five stages in depth and produce more developed prototypes. The half-day is ideal when time is short but you still want meaningful creative output.
Can we bring a real challenge to work on?
Absolutely, and we encourage it. The workshop produces much richer results when teams work on a genuine challenge rather than a hypothetical one. We'll work with you before the session to frame the challenge in a way that sets the team up for a productive day.
Can the workshop be delivered remotely?
Yes. We regularly run this workshop in person, remotely, and in hybrid settings. All three formats work well. We adapt the facilitation approach and the choice of AI tools to suit the delivery mode.
Ready to bring design thinking and AI together for your team?
If your team works on design, product, or service challenges, this workshop gives you a structured, energising way to use AI tools at every stage of the creative process. Let's start with a conversation.
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