ADT: a digital card-based toolkit for AI-augmented design thinking

ABSTRACT: This paper presents ADT, a digital card-based toolkit designed to integrate AI into the Design Thinking process. A survey of 204 designers examined AI literacy, usage patterns, and adoption barriers. Results indicated uneven familiarity, with higher use in Prototyping and Testing stages. Key challenges included prompting, trust, ethics, and training gaps. ADT, thus, structures four professional roles across five design-thinking stages, providing reusable prompts, recommended AI tools, exemplar outputs, and ethical reminders to promote informed and responsible human–AI collaboration.