Spark
Lenovo Internship
Team
Solo
Year
2025
Duration
6 weeks
Overview
During my 8-week internship with Lenovo’s Design Innovation Team, I was tasked with independently identifying and visualizing Lenovo’s niche within the AI software market. My solution was Spark, an AI assistant that helps creatives break down abstract goals into manageable tasks.
My Role
UX Design: conducted user research to identify a problem and design a mobile prototype solution.
Visual Design: used color, typography, and iconography to develop a usable and accessible visual system.
The Challenge
Design an AI experience through the lens of Lenovo.
My Solution
A personalized AI partner that guides creatives through their process and keeps track of their progress.
During my 8-week internship with Lenovo’s Design Innovation Team, I was tasked with independently identifying and visualizing Lenovo’s niche within the AI software market. My solution was Spark, an AI assistant that helps users break down lofty goals into manageable tasks.
Understanding AI
Research shows that trust, ownership, and discoverability are the three biggest barriers to using generative AI.
Trust
Fear that gen AI output is inaccurate or unreliable.
Ownership
Fear that using gen AI is illegal, dishonest or immoral. Want to retain control over their creativity.
Discoverability
Text and voice command interfaces don’t show the extent to which AI can help users.
Understanding My Audience
I spoke young creatives and students, the target users of Lenovo's Yoga PC line, to understand their challenges.
Ideation Paralysis
Designers are overwhelmed with too many or too little ideas, as well as moving forward after receiving feedback.
Visual Search
Artists struggle to describe and locate visual references that match their imagination.
Organization
Juggling deadlines, tasks, and keeping documentation is stressful and distracts from the important work.
Problem
Designers often struggle to maintain motivation in their creative workflows. Without consistent habits or personalized support, it becomes difficult to be creative.
Ideas and Exploration
How might AI become an ideation partner? A workflow coach? How might we gamify creativity?
Using How Might We questions, I rapidly brainstormed ways that AI could help creatives ideate, improve their workflows, and make creativity fun. Through quick low-fidelity designs, I explored different approaches to addressing my problem.
My Solution
A personalized AI partner that guides creatives through their process and keeps track of their progress.
After several rounds of ideating and refining, my design process led me to a final solution: an AI assisted workflow partner that helps users break big goals into approachable tasks so that they can accomplish their creative goals.
Persona
Final Design
Understanding Your Creativity
The first step Spark takes is understanding you. Through a series of onboarding questions, Spark identifies your primary modes of work, your challenges, and your ultimate goals. Spark helps you get started with an initial project, outlining the concrete steps you can take to complete it.
Keeping you inspired so you can keep doing you.
The Daily Challenge is a creative task related to your current progress and goals. These exercises help keep your skills sharp and your mind inspired, preventing burnout and frustration.
All your inspiration in one place.
No more combing Pinterest for the right reference or forgetting to take progress pictures until you are almost done. Spark can generate images, play your favorite music, and learn your habits to remind you to take breaks and take pictures.
Daily habits create long-term growth.
Come back everyday to keep your streak, and eventually see how far you've come.
Make progress across all your devices.
Spark meets you where you are. Use Spark throughout your Lenovo ecosystem.
Looking Forward
Social Feature
Leverage Spark as a platform to share progress between friends and communities. Keep each other accountable and celebrate successes together.
Hardware Integration
Incorporate AI hardware to enhance personalization. Cross-device knowledge, AI lamp, biometric trackers to create a more seamless experience.
Native Software Integration
Integrate Spark into operating system rather than have it as an external application. Enhance cohesion, invisibility, and personalization.
Why This Matters
Personalization is the future of consumer AI
Technology that can understand the user, adapt, and embody emotional intelligence.
Human-centered mission
AI that helps creators maximize their ability, rather than replace them. People are at the core of the solution.
Scalable beyond creatives
Spark is designed for creatives, but everyone has goals they want to achieve. Its foundation can be applied to anyone, form students to coders to entrepreneurs.
