User-Centered Design with AI in the Loop: A Case Study of Rapid User Interface Prototyping with "Vibe Coding"

TL;DR

This paper explores using large language models to rapidly generate user interface prototypes through vibe coding, enhancing user-centered design by enabling quick iteration and feedback from domain experts.

Contribution

It introduces an AI-in-the-loop process for rapid UI prototyping with generative UIs, demonstrating its application in a traffic data analysis tool for engineers.

Findings

Enhanced user feedback collection through generative UIs

Successful rapid prototyping of an analytics interface

Identified advantages and challenges of vibe coding

Abstract

We present a case study of using generative user interfaces, or ``vibe coding,'' a method leveraging large language models (LLMs) for generating code via natural language prompts, to support rapid prototyping in user-centered design (UCD). Extending traditional UCD practices, we propose an AI-in-the-loop ideate-prototyping process. We share insights from an empirical experience integrating this process to develop an interactive data analytics interface for highway traffic engineers to effectively retrieve and analyze historical traffic data. With generative UIs, the team was able to elicit rich user feedback and test multiple alternative design ideas from user evaluation interviews and real-time collaborative sessions with domain experts. We discuss the advantages and pitfalls of vibe coding for bridging the gaps between design expertise and domain-specific expertise.