Side Hustle

In this post, we'll go over 5 of the top AI side hustles for product designers in 2024. From creating digital assets to training AI models, these gigs let you flex your creative muscles or nerd out on the latest tech. And the best part? Many can be done on your own schedule from the comfort of home. So whether you want to pad your wallet or just have some fun with AI, read on for the inside scoop on the top opportunities out there! With just a little effort, you could start raking in extra income doing what you love.

Offer AI-Powered Design Services

As a product designer, AI opens up opportunities to create innovative digital products. You can harness AI tools to generate product ideas, mockups, and prototypes. Some possibilities include:

AI-Generated Product Concepts

Using AI idea generators, you can come up with hundreds of new product concepts in minutes. AI studies trends, consumer needs, and existing products to suggest ideas tailored to your target market. The ideas may spark inspiration or combine in new ways. Review, refine, and develop the most promising concepts.

AI-Assisted Mockups and Prototypes

AI design tools help you quickly create mockups, wireframes, and interactive prototypes. Upload your sketches or product specs and the AI generates customized mockups. Tweak the mockups, and the AI instantly updates them. Use the mockups to get stakeholder buy-in and user feedback. Then build higher-fidelity prototypes to test and iterate your designs.

Personalized Product Recommendations

Recommendation engines are a popular AI application. As a product designer, you can create recommendation systems to suggest related or complementary products to customers. The AI studies buying behaviors and identifies relationships between products to make personalized recommendations. Recommendation systems keep customers engaged and boost sales.

Leveraging AI at different stages of the design process helps you work faster and smarter. You can generate more ideas, accelerate design iterations, and build recommendation systems into your products. The future is bright for product designers who embrace AI as a tool to enhance their creativity. Keep learning the latest AI design skills, and you'll gain a competitive advantage in your field.

Teach an AI Design Course

As an AI-savvy designer, you're in a great position to offer specialized AI design services to companies looking to leverage this exciting new technology.AI for User Research

You can help companies conduct user research using AI. For example, you can analyze social media posts, reviews and comments to uncover insights into customer needs, pain points and desires. AI tools can detect trends, themes and sentiments on a huge scale. Use your design skills to translate these findings into actionable insights for your clients.

AI-Generated Design Concepts

Use AI to generate a wide range of design concepts, options and alternatives for your clients. Then work with them to refine the best options based on your expertise and their business needs. This fusion of human and AI design can lead to innovative new ideas.

AI to Enhance and Optimize Design

Apply AI to enhance and optimize your clients' existing designs. For example, use AI to suggest improvements to user experience flows, make interfaces more engaging or streamline information architecture. Let AI identify issues, then step in to make strategic design decisions and guide AI-powered changes.

Educate and Consult on AI Best Practices

Share your knowledge about responsible and ethical AI design with your clients. Educate them on AI best practices and consult with them on how to implement AI in a trustworthy, transparent and equitable manner. Your expertise in human-centered AI design will be invaluable.

AI is the future of design, and by offering AI-powered services you'll establish yourself as a leader in this growing field. Combine your design skills with AI to provide enhanced value to your clients. And through education and consulting, help companies adopt AI in a way that benefits both their business and their customers. The opportunities are endless!

Build an AI Assistant for Designers

As an AI designer, you have skills that are in high demand. Why not leverage your expertise to teach online courses? Develop a Curriculum

First, determine your course topic and outline. For example, you could teach UI/UX designers how to incorporate AI into their workflow, or teach software engineers the fundamentals of AI design. Lay out 4-6 modules that build on each other.

Build Your Course Materials

Now it’s time to create your content. Develop interactive exercises, video tutorials, cheat sheets, and slide decks. Use your own work samples to demonstrate key concepts. Explain technical topics in an easy to understand way.

Select a Platform and Launch Your Course

Popular course platforms include Udemy, Coursera, and Udacity. They handle hosting your content, enrollments, and payments. You can charge between $20 to $200 per student depending on the platform. Market your course on social media to attract students. Provide good support in the community forums to get high ratings.

Continue Improving

Review feedback and make updates to your course. Add new content on latest AI techniques. One benefit of online courses is that you can re-purpose and re-use materials. Your course can be a source of passive income for years to come.

Teaching AI design is a great way for designers to make extra money by leveraging their skills. You can work around your own schedule, all while helping others expand their knowledge. While course creation does take significant upfront work, a single course has the potential to generate ongoing revenue for the long run. Why not give it a shot? You have the opportunity to become a leader in this growing field.

Develop a Niche AI Design Tool

As an AI side hustle, you could develop an AI assistant specifically tailored to product designers. This type of assistant could help automate and streamline many of the repetitive tasks designers do each day.

Research and Inspiration

An AI assistant could search the web for design inspiration and examples that match a designer’s specific needs. It could look for color palettes, fonts, UI elements, and more based on the designer’s current project. The assistant could also keep an inspiration library of examples the designer flags for future reference.

Asset Management

Managing design assets like fonts, icons, photos, and brand guidelines can be tedious work. An AI assistant could help organize and tag assets, making them easy to find when needed. The assistant could also ensure brand consistency by flagging when a designer uses assets that don’t match the brand’s style guide.

Feedback and Reviews

Giving and receiving useful feedback is an important part of the design process. An AI assistant could analyze designs and provide objective feedback and suggestions for improvement. It could also summarize feedback from stakeholders and users to help designers quickly understand the key points.

Project Management

From keeping a project timeline to assigning tasks to team members, project management requires a lot of organization. An AI assistant focused on the design process could help schedule meetings, set deadlines, create project plans, and more. It could also automatically track the time designers spend on different tasks to gain insights into productivity and areas for improvement.

Developing an AI assistant like this would require significant time and resources, but for designers, the end result could be a huge time-saver. The opportunity to build a useful tool that streamlines their workflow may appeal to many designers. An AI side hustle in this niche has the potential for success.