This phase defines the product’s structural blueprint — how content, navigation, and AI-assisted components are organized within the experience.
Macro-zoning establishes the layout logic, while arborescence defines the navigation architecture and the relationships between screens.
Together, they ensure the product is both intuitive and aligned with user goals.
Designers begin by sketching the main interface zones of key screens, focusing on structure rather than aesthetics.
AI co-pilot tools accelerate this step by generating initial wireframe layouts from natural-language prompts.
These drafts help the team explore multiple options rapidly before refining them according to usability principles such as hierarchy, alignment, and clarity.
At this stage, designers also determine how AI elements are visually integrated into the interface.
They define where AI suggestions, chat panels, or assistive modules appear, how they are labeled for transparency, and how users can review or override their outputs.
HITL interactions are planned early — buttons like “Approve AI Draft” or editable text zones make oversight tangible.
By designing these affordances up front, AI becomes a natural part of the workflow rather than an add-on.
In parallel, the team formalizes the screen hierarchy — the sitemap or flow diagram showing how users navigate the product.
AI can suggest a first draft based on the one-pager and feature list, outlining possible structures such as Home → Dashboard → Reports → Settings.
Designers then refine the hierarchy to reflect user mental models and ensure it supports the journeys mapped earlier.
The final arborescence defines all main and secondary screens, their relationships, and navigation logic.
As the interface and flows take shape, the team defines who does what across the experience.
For each major feature, it specifies which tasks the AI system performs and which remain under human responsibility or validation.
This “responsibility map” functions like a narrative RACI — AI may draft, suggest, or rank; humans review, confirm, or correct.