The voice guide has its own documentation: Northstar Voice Agent | Conversation design
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Northstar is an interactive learning tool. Students build an imaginary AI, run it, and watch who it leaves behind. A narrator and a real-time voice guide explain the numbers in plain language. I took it from brief to a live web app on my own.
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| Role | Sole product designer: research, IA, interaction, visual, content and voice |
|---|---|
| Type | MXDAI project, live product |
| Methods | AI Experience Canvas, persona, jobs to be done, conversation design |
| Deliverables | Live web app, IA and flows, content for 16 domains, voice guide, case study |
| Tools | Figma, FigJam, Lovable, Claude, Deepgram |
| Links | Live app · Case study · FigJam information architecture |
AI now helps decide who gets hired, who gets a loan and who gets seen first at a hospital. Most people learn about bias in these systems from articles and lectures. AI systems are often treated as neutral, while biased data and design choices quietly shape outcomes. The resources that explain this are either too technical or too abstract to connect with real decisions.
| Tool | Built for | What it asks of you | Gap for learners |
|---|---|---|---|
| IBM AI Fairness 360 | Data scientists | Python, fairness metrics, your own model | Needs code and statistics to start |
| Google What-If Tool | ML practitioners | A trained model and a dataset | Powerful, but assumes you know what to look for |
| Articles and courses | Everyone | Reading | Explains bias without letting you cause it |
| Northstar | Students and curious people | Moving a slider and pressing Run | Designed to close this gap |
How can someone with no technical background cause bias, see who it affects and understand why, in a few minutes?
Who it's for. Primary: design and CS students, early-career professionals, and high-school students in AI or digital citizenship programs. Secondary: educators, workshop facilitators and high-school teachers adding AI literacy to their classes. Used in classrooms, workshops, online modules and self-study, often projected and discussed in a group.