Experimenting with Generative AI Tools and their Implications: Insights from High School UX Educators

As generative AI (GAI) tools become more advanced and adopted in professional user experience (UX) design fields, high school educators teaching UX and design-related courses have begun tinkering with GAI tools to use in their classrooms. Through interviews with high school UX educators, we examined their experiences incorporating GAI tools when teaching interdisciplinary UX courses. Key observations we identified include: 1) interactive student-to-student engagement and student-to-GAI collaborative learning; 2) modifications in brainstorming and visualization workflows with GAI; 3) concerns and barriers with the ongoing integration of GAI tools into high school curricula. We conclude with a discussion of implications and opportunities for critical and thoughtful use of GAI in high school design pedagogy.