Accelerating Innovation with AI

Description

I led the British Red Cross Fundraising Innovation team in embedding AI into the product development cycle, transforming the way we generated, tested, and delivered new concepts. By integrating tools such as ChatGPT, DALL·E, synthetic user testing, and System 1, we reduced our MVP delivery timelines from one year to three months, while scaling the number of ideas tested in each innovation cycle from one to five.

Information

Brief

Increase pace and the rate of experimentation

Service

AI Tools & Adoption within the product development process

Client

British Red Cross

Field

User Testing & Product Development

Product

Innovation Process Redesign

Year

2024

Timeline

2 months

Team size

Challenge

When I started working with the innovation team, they were struggling with pace. Launching an MVP test in-market took almost a year, a cycle far too long for a team expected to deliver 1 Pilot and 3 MVP tests a year. The slow turnaround limited the team’s ability to validate ideas quickly, and often led to the sunk time cost fallacy.

Opportunity

The team needed to find a way to work faster, increase the rate of experimentation and move past blockers without waiting for lengthy decision-making processes. There was a clear opportunity to explore how emerging AI tools could accelerate product design, user testing, and prototyping, while also building confidence and capability in the team.

Solution

I introduced the use of AI tools into the team’s product development cycle:

ChatGPT to accelerate concept development and problem definition.
DALL·E to rapidly generate mock-ups and creative assets.
Synthetic users & System 1 to test concepts and gain instant feedback before investing in full-scale user research.

We piloted the approach with two product ideas:

Shop Red — a plug-in allowing customers to donate seamlessly while shopping.
In-Game Donations — enabling players to purchase in-game items with proceeds going to charity.

Outcome

Increased throughput: Idea testing scaled from testing 1 idea per cycle to 5.
Faster MVPs: Reduced delivery timelines from 12 months to 3 months.
Pace: Shortened user feedback cycles from 3 months to 4 weeks.
Stronger pipeline: Generated 63 initial ideas > 23 mocked up visual concepts > 6 shortlisted solutions > 2 product concepts developed into MVPs.
Culture shift: I introduced a new “way of working” that embedded AI and experimentation.