Walgreens STARS (Safety Tracking System)
Exploring AI-assisted workflows for product design.
An early-stage concept proposed within Walgreens, exploring how a conversational AI assistant could support product designers throughout the design process. The proposed experience brings research synthesis, wireframing, visual design, prototyping, and developer handoff into a lightweight, context-aware Figma plugin.
Product Stage: Early-stage concept / Proposed experience
Platform: Figma Desktop Plugin
Focus: UX/UI Design, AI-Assisted Workflows, Design Productivity
Organization: Walgreens
The Problem
Design work is fragmented.
Product designers rely on multiple tools to conduct research, explore ideas, build interfaces, and collaborate with developers. Moving between these environments can interrupt workflows, fragment important context, and introduce unnecessary friction.
While AI presents opportunities to streamline individual design activities, integrating these capabilities into existing workflows introduces new challenges around usability, consistency, and maintaining designer control.
The opportunity was to explore how AI could become a natural extension of the tools designers already use.
The Design Challenge
Bringing AI into the existing workflow.
How might AI-powered assistance support the design process without introducing another layer of complexity?
The proposed experience focused on integrating conversational assistance directly into Figma, allowing designers to request recommendations, explore solutions, and initiate common design activities without switching between applications.
The objective was to support existing design practices rather than replace them with a fully automated process.
The Proposed Approach
A conversation-first experience.
The concept centered on a lightweight chat interface embedded within the Figma workspace.
Rather than navigating extensive menus or separate dashboards, designers could describe their goals using natural-language prompts and receive contextual suggestions based on the task at hand.
The experience emphasized progressive disclosure, introducing additional actions only when relevant and keeping the interface focused on the designer's immediate needs.
Key Design Decisions
Keeping the experience simple and contextual.
01 — Natural-language interaction
A familiar conversational interface would allow designers to ask questions, explore problems, and request assistance without learning a new set of tools.
02 - Contextual recommendations
Suggested actions could respond to the designer's prompt and selected Figma content, making relevant capabilities easier to discover.
03 - Progressive disclosure
Additional functionality would appear as needed, reducing visual complexity and keeping attention on the current task.
04 - Editable design outputs
The proposed workflow envisioned translating AI-generated suggestions into editable Figma frames and components, allowing designers to continue refining their work.
05 - Designer Control
From question to design output.
The Walgreens AI Design Assistant concept envisioned a compact, conversational plugin that could support everyday design activities without requiring designers to leave Figma.
Through natural-language prompts, designers could request research summaries, explore wireframe alternatives, receive interface recommendations, and prepare design documentation for development.
Rather than introducing a separate AI platform, the proposed experience would integrate assistance into existing workflows and help preserve context between stages of the design process.
Reflection
Supporting designers through AI. The concept highlighted an opportunity to integrate AI assistance into existing design tools without disrupting established workflows.
By emphasizing conversational interaction, contextual recommendations, and editable outputs, the proposed experience demonstrated how AI could potentially reduce repetitive work and improve continuity between research, design, and development.
The underlying principle remained straightforward: AI should enhance the designer's capabilities while preserving human judgment, creativity, and ownership of design decisions.