A role-bounded AI team for user-centred design.
Eleven evidence-led AI teammates organise specialist UCD work from research to a testable prototype, with a person approving every gate.
UCD Bots
Design · Vercel · Live
At a glance
Problem
Generic AI collapses an entire multidisciplinary UCD team into one assistant, losing specialist boundaries and accountability.
Role
Product strategy, role architecture, service design, interaction design, content, front end.
Stack
Next.js, Vercel, Grok Bot, eleven role-bounded teammates, evidence-led workflow.
Status
Live on Grok Bot.
The problem.
A user researcher, interaction designer, business analyst, and accessibility specialist do not approach the same brief in the same way. A single general-purpose prompt hides those differences and makes it difficult to know who owns a decision. The design challenge was to represent a multidisciplinary team without pretending that automation removes the need for human judgement.
0→1.
Defined one UCD Lead as the visible orchestrator and ten specialists with named remits, boundaries, inputs, and outputs.
Mapped the roster across Discover, Define, Design, and Deliver and validate, while making clear that real UCD work overlaps rather than following a rigid waterfall.
Made approval, evidence strength, WCAG 2.2 AA, British English, and recognised GDS and NN/g role boundaries shared constraints across the team.
Positioned the website honestly as the public front door to teammates running on Grok Bot, not as software installed on the marketing domain.
Under the hood.
The public product model separates orchestration from craft: UCD Lead briefs specialists by remit and phase, synthesises stage packs, and pauses at gates. Grok Bot supplies the always-on teammate platform and tool access; the UCDOps layer supplies the team shape, role contracts, methods, and approval model.
Interaction.
Lead first, specialists one level down
People begin with UCD Lead instead of choosing among eleven unfamiliar agents. The lead routes the work; the roster remains visible for anyone who needs to inspect the team shape.
Role cards explain the boundary
Each teammate is described by the decisions it owns, not by a vague personality. The copy makes hand-offs and overlaps legible before someone opens Grok Bot.
A pipeline that admits overlap
The five-stage path is labelled as typical rather than mandatory. Planning can start early, business analysis can run alongside definition, and accessibility remains continuous.
Accountability is visible
Human approval, evidence-led claims, accessibility criteria, language, and role boundaries appear as product features because they define whether the output can be trusted.
What shipped.
- One orchestrator and ten specialist teammates spanning planning, research, analysis, content, UX, interaction, product, UI, prototyping, and accessibility. Live on Grok Bot with human approval at every stage.
- A visible team model makes role boundaries and routing understandable
- The public site provides a clear front door into Grok Bot without implying software runs on the marketing domain
- Product strategy
- Agent UX
- Service design