Duration: 3 months | Spring 2025 | Team: Brianna Scott, Haley Mason, and Sam Lesser | Programs: Figma + Adobe Illustrator+ Adobe After Effects
AI-powered tool for photo and video content creation, editing, and publishing. It streamlines content optimization, automates editing, and provides insights for social media managers and small businesses to enhance their digital presence.
Problem
Small businesses rely heavily on social media for exposure and sales, but the process of content creation is fragmented. Most existing tools only cover one part of the journey, forcing users to juggle multiple apps for brainstorming, design, scheduling, posting, and performance tracking. This creates inefficiency, inconsistency, and missed opportunities to connect with customers.
Solution
We designed Iris, an all-in-one B2B platform that streamlines the social media workflow. Powered by generative AI, it supports brainstorming, trend analysis, content generation across formats, scheduling, performance tracking, and posting to multiple platforms from a single hub. For busy business owners who already wear many hats, Iris simplifies the process, saves valuable time, and helps them stay consistent while growing their reach with confidence.
How might we design a platform that supports both experienced users who want minimal assistance and busy business owners who rely on AI to streamline content creation while maintaining quality and consistency?
By connecting user needs with technical possibilities, we identified three key opportunities:
Time-saving multi-platform posting
Powered by time series forecasting to predict optimal posting schedules and streamline cross-platform publishing.Automated content creation tailored to individual needs
Enhanced through Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate unique visuals and adapt content across formats.Organized, scheduled, and easily accessible content
Supported by deep learning image detection to categorize, tag, and store media so users can quickly find and reuse assets.
Task Flow
Lowfi Wireframes
We explored how far generative AI should go within the platform.
Some team members felt AI could take over entirely, generating full images for users, while others questioned if even captions or text generation pushed the limits too far. These conflicting perspectives led us to pause and reconsider: where should AI assist, and where should creative control remain with the user?
This pivot helped us focus on our busy business owner persona, who values support with efficiency but still wants to maintain authenticity in their brand voice. By acknowledging that different users have varying comfort levels with AI, we refined our concepts to balance automation with user control.
Manual Create
Advanced editing is available for users who want to have a more hands-on approach to content creation and photo editing.
Prompt Edit Button
The Prompt Edit button gives users more control than the standard AI generate option. By entering their own language and directions, users can collaborate with the AI system to shape content that feels distinctive and true to their brand.
Mobile Photos
The mobile app offers a smaller set of features than the website, but makes it easy to capture and edit photos with the phone’s camera. Images are AI-enhanced and saved to a built-in drive, so they’re ready to use for content without taking up space in the phone’s gallery.
Impact
When we presented Iris at SAS, feedback showed both enthusiasm and caution. Many participants highlighted how an application like this could immediately help streamline business content creation, saving time and improving consistency. At the same time, there were mixed perspectives on the role of generative AI, with some excited by its potential and others concerned about its limits or ethical implications. These insights reinforced the importance of building flexibility into the platform, allowing different users to decide how much or how little they rely on AI.
Reflection
I am forever grateful for this experience, as it was my first large UX project and an opportunity to work alongside experienced designers. I learned that collaboration only works when there is open communication, and I grew in my ability to design around user needs while also leaving room for flexibility. This was especially important when working with AI, which continues to be both powerful and controversial.
Future Opportunities
If I were to continue this project, I would conduct more user testing to better understand how different audiences interact with AI features. I would also expand the concept to explore what video capturing and editing could look like within the platform. In addition, I would refine the mobile experience to better support quick, on-the-go content creation without losing the depth of the desktop tools.
