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Beyond the Blank Page

At work I'm designing a new course. A dense one. Food Safety level 2. I'm sure we all know the feeling. The blank page. Or, perhaps more daunting, its opposite: the 75-slide PowerPoint, the dense policy document, the endless heap of raw information I'm supposed to spin into "engaging learning material".

As a creator, a designer, a writer, this is where so much of my energy traditionally goes—not into the creative act itself, but into the manual labour of preparation. I call it "content-wrangling" or "triage." It's the slow, meticulous, and often draining process of highlighting, summarising, and sorting the "need to know" from the "nice to know."

This old way is linear, expensive, and rigid. It burns out our Subject Matter Experts by using them as drafters, not refiners, and they have only so much time. And it often results in passive, "click-next" learning that mirrors the very documents it came from. We’re left focusing on knowledge-recall, not human application.

But what if we could reclaim that energy?

The New Model: The AI Strategic Partner

I've been experimenting with a new model that reframes AI from a simple "tool" to a true creative collaborator. It's a dynamic loop that shifts the focus from manual labour to human expertise.

It works in three phases:

  1. AI Triage & Synthesis: First, the AI does the "heavy lifting." We give it (or him - we're talking about my Gemini after all) the entire 75-slide deck or the document riddled with bullet points. In minutes, Gemini performs a "digital triage," identifying the core themes and separating the vital "Core Journey" from the supplementary "Resource Library."

  2. Human-AI Co-Design: This is where the magic happens. Freed from the slog of triage, I (the human) can immediately move to high-level design. I use the AI's synthesis as my foundation, and we begin to brainstorm. We design active, problem-based scenarios. We build "fail and try again" moments. The AI acts as an indefatigable partner, drafting, iterating, and challenging ideas in real-time.

  3. AI-Powered Production: Once the design is set, the AI helps generate the first-draft assets: scripts for videos, prompts for context-specific images, and the text for those thought-provoking scenarios.

It's Not About Speed, It's About Quality

This process is, yes, significantly faster and cheaper. But that's not the most important outcome. The true benefit is a fundamental shift in quality and humanity.

We Optimise for Expertise: We stop asking our SMEs to stare at a blank page. Instead, we present them with a 90%-complete, high-quality, interactive activity plan. We get to use their precious time for what truly matters: high-level validation, nuance, and refinement.

We Design for Critical Thought: We instantly move beyond "What are the rules?" to "Why do these rules exist?" We can design complex scenarios, like the one we built for Food Safety: "Why is heating food to 72°C correct, while the logical-sounding 95°C is not?" This "fail and try again" model is where deep, memorable learning happens.

We Create Empathetic Experiences: For a sensitive topic like Domestic Abuse, a dry policy document is worse than useless. Our collaborative model allowed us to transform formal text into relatable, human-centric stories. Using AI-powered media tools, we could generate custom visuals for these stories, creating an empathetic experience that connects on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one.

The Superpower is Partnership

This model is not about replacing the designer. It's about augmenting them. It’s like having superpowers.

The AI partner handles the 80% of the task that is pure, replicable labour. This frees the human designer to focus on the 20% that only a human can do: the empathy, the critical judgement, the pedagogical strategy, and the creative spark.

It’s a transferable, human-centred, AI-augmented approach that we can apply to any topic.

Przeczytaj po polsku


A blank room, a choice,
The ladder leads to the light.
A new path is clear.


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