Making AI work for us: how can NotebookLM help us spread good design thinking?

How this tool can help you breathe new life into your UX docs.

In the age of AI, notebooks have no spines 🤯. Image generated with Midjourney

Friends, this isn’t an AI-hype piece. I’m interested in how tools—AI or not—can help scale the impact a small but incredibly mighty team of content designers can have, especially given that we’re a scarce resource and can’t support everyone who might want or benefit from our expertise.

Enter Google’s NotebookLM. I’ll walk you through some of my experimentation with this tool, what I’ve found works, and how I’m currently using it. As a content designer, this will be through the lens of UX content design, but the same principles can apply to any design or product documentation.

Let’s go!

What is NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is an AI-powered research and documentation tool that can help you organize, reference, and interact with your content more engagingly through a chat interface.

I know what you’re thinking. A chat? Groundbreaking. (If you read that as Miranda Priestly, we can be friends.) It’s not a novel concept, but it’s quick, easy, and free to use, and so far, I’ve found it to be pretty helpful.