Adobe – Exploring AI in Creative Workflows

ROLE
UX Designer
DURATION
2 Weeks
TEAM
15-Person Cross-Disciplinary Team
SKILLS
Research Synthesis Concept Development
Figma, FigJam, Photoshop
CONTEXT

What do creatives actually want AI to do?

Adobe's MINT team came to SCADpro to explore what comes next for generative AI in creative workflows. Not just what AI can do, but what creatives actually want it to do. Where should it take over, where should it stay out, and how do you keep the process human centered.

Fragments from Adobe's MINT team kickoff presentation
PROBLEM

The mid stage of the workflow has no AI support

The hardest part of any project is deciding what to make from what you found. AI does not help with that yet.

Made with Adobe FireFly
Ideation
Exploration
Decision
Execution
Output
OUTCOMES

6

Early directions explored across the AI creative workflow

2

Concepts developed and presented to Adobe's MINT leadership team

RESEARCH

8 out of 35 apps have no AI at all

The rest are focused on generating, automating, processing. All useful, all happening before or after the creative decision. Nobody is in the room when the thinking is actually happening.

Snapshot of Creative Cloud Apps Analysis

Designers know where AI belongs. The tools don't

We surveyed 23 creatives across disciplines. They want AI to handle execution, freeing them to think, ideate, and decide. The current toolset does the opposite.

Anna, Graphic Designer
"I love and want to spend most of my time in the ideation and brainstorming phases. At the execution level, AI could do a lot for me — but what makes AI deliver great outcomes is having a great idea in the first place."
The FigJam survey snapshot
IDEATION

Six directions, one constraint

Drawing from both research and firsthand creative experience, each concept targeted a different touchpoint within the mid-stage workflow, where creative decisions are still being made.

Documentation Assistant
Capturing creative decisions as they happen
Iteration Tracking
Mapping how ideas evolve over time
Creative Prompt Writer
Supporting idea exploration and variety
Creative Critique
AI feedback during exploration
Style-Aware AI
Maintaining and evolving personal style
Cross-Medium Creation
Connecting physical and digital spaces

What resonated

Two themes came back consistently. Support the thinking process from inside the tool. Make AI work across the full system, not just one file.

Jason Linder,
Director of Emerging Design
Systems thinking and AI interoperability
Aimee Heikkila,
Director of Design
Idea expansion and creative exploration
Bria Alexander,
Senior Design Program Manager
Style continuity, critique and iteration
Agent Systems
Creative Ideation
Physical & Digital Creation
SOLUTION

Monocle, an AI layer that lives inside your existing Adobe tools

It catches alignment inconsistencies, spacing gaps, and accessibility issues as you design, and resolves the basic ones automatically. Most useful right before sharing. A background check that keeps your work clean without interrupting the process.

Iteration tracking
Pattern recognition
Accessibility check
Auto-resolution of basic issues

Wander, an AR glasses at true scale, in real conditions

Production decisions made from a laptop screen are the most expensive kind. Wander closes that gap by projecting any design onto any physical surface through the glasses or via map-based simulation when the site isn't reachable. See it at true scale, in real conditions, before a single material is ordered. The approval happens before the cost does.

Surface snapping
Location mapping
True-scale projection
Pre-production review
TAKEAWAYS

Collaboration over isolation

Thinking together moves faster than thinking alone
Open-ended briefs stay conceptual without specific constraints to push against

Design for the system

A product that lives inside an ecosystem has to be designed with that ecosystem in mind from the start
Translating behavioral data into design decisions and back again is a muscle worth building early

opportunity space