Scaling content design with AI

Challenge

Growing demand meant content designers were spending more time supporting day-to-day requests than strategic initiatives. We needed a scalable solution that enabled product teams while maintaining Decathlon’s tone, principles, and quality standards.

Team

Product design, research, product managers, engineering and localisation

Approach

• Identified opportunities for AI enablement

  Analysed recurring content design requests to identify where AI could responsibly extend content design support without replacing human expertise.

  
  

• Designed the AI interaction model

  Developed the assistant's model, including prompt flows, contextual questioning, and guidance patterns that improved the quality and relevance of generated content.

  
  

  

  Detailed guidance on design system components to keep the experience consistent

  
  

• Created scalable prompt frameworks

  Developed reusable prompt frameworks, common scenarios, and embedded content principles so teams could generate consistent, on-brand content with minimal effort.

  
  

  

  Guidance for scenarios, helping teams make faster, more consistent decisions

  
  

• Evaluated AI output

  Tested generated content against content principles and real product scenarios, refining prompts and guidance based on quality, relevance and consistency.

  
  

• Established governance for responsible AI

  Partnered with product teams to tailor the assistant for different domains while establishing governance principles that ensured critical user journeys continued to involve content designers.

Work

Designed to gather context before generating content to give more relevant suggestions

Outcome

The assistant is now used by multiple teams across Decathlon to generate content, compare alternatives, and access content guidance without relying on a content designer for every request. We gained more capacity to focus on strategic initiatives while maintaining consistency across products.

What I learned

We have entered a brave new world. Designing AI is as much about defining boundaries as it is about creating capabilities. This project reinforced that responsible AI depends on context, governance, and thoughtful interaction design - not just better prompts.