This audit measures whether AI tools are replacing your judgement about user needs or supporting it. The questions focus on research synthesis, design decisions, and the quality of empathy in your work.
When an AI tool summarises research, compare its summary against your own notes of the same conversation. The gaps are where your value as a designer lives.
Before accepting a design pattern suggestion, write one sentence about the specific user need it addresses in your product. If you cannot write that sentence, you do not understand the pattern well enough to use it.
Keep a list of design decisions that worked against conventional wisdom. Review them quarterly to see whether you made them because the user needed them or because you were afraid to follow the pattern.
In your next design critique, ask the designer to explain the user problem they solved, not the pattern they applied. This habit breaks the chain between AI suggestions and unreflective use.
Read the transcripts and watch the video clips of your user research before you let any AI tool analyse it. The contradiction and emotion in raw research is where empathy comes from.