Accelerating Human Insight
Northwestern’s mpd² program is piloting cutting-edge AI tools to transform how students conduct research and develop products.
When Jim Wicks watched students struggle to schedule interviews with busy professionals last spring, he knew there had to be a better way.
The director of Northwestern Engineering's Master of Product Design and Development Management (mpd²) program had seen too many promising research projects derailed by the simple challenge of finding doctors, lawyers, or electricians willing to spare an hour for student interviews.
That frustration led Wicks to pilot Verve, an AI platform that creates simulations of real people – synthetic users – based on hundreds of industries and thousands of real research sessions. Now, his students can interview a simulated 25-year-old urban school teacher with a pet at 2 a.m., should the need arise.
“What Verve does is it uses all their data to build up these synthetic users,” Wicks said. “And what's really good about that is you can access these people and do the research whenever you want.”
The platform boasts up to 90 percent accuracy compared to real interviews, Wicks said. For busy graduate students looking for background information while juggling full-time jobs and coursework, that trade-off opens new possibilities – and advances important research.
mpd² is embracing AI across its curriculum as faculty recognize the technology’s potential to eliminate tedious tasks and amplify human creativity. In analytics classes, AI generates personalized case studies when students need examples from their specific industries. In capstone projects, AI tools help scale user interface prototypes from single designs into multiple variations.
The program maintains guardrails around AI adoption. Accounting and finance classes still use paper tests to ensure students master fundamental concepts without AI assistance. Faculty emphasize that AI should accelerate human insight, not replace it.
John Renaldi, who teaches in the program, sees AI as liberating product managers from the endless cycle of updating backlogs, writing specifications, and managing documentation that prevents them from focusing on strategy and customer discovery.
This transformation is already visible in student work. Capstone presentations have evolved from simple slide decks to partially functioning applications that leverage AI capabilities. Projects that once required months to reach minimum viable product status now take weeks.
But the goals of the program’s AI integration go beyond efficiency gains. The true purpose is to prepare students for successful careers augmented by effective use of AI.
“By using AI to automate some of the nuts‑and‑bolts work, we can accelerate front‑end discovery and spend more time there,” Renaldi said. “Early discovery is incredibly valuable. Sound product decisions made at the outset can prevent months of wasted engineering time and flawed assumptions.”
This year, the program plans to dedicate more curriculum time to what Renaldi calls "agentic AI systems" – teaching students how to design, delegate to, and supervise AI agents. The goal is to create product leaders adept at blending human judgment with AI's speed and pattern recognition.
Renaldi said AI is democratizing what he calls the "Product Trifecta" – the rare combination of product judgment, design sensibility, and technical fluency that previously made certain individuals disproportionately effective.
“AI is lowering the barriers to achieving high-level performance,” Renaldi said. “Now, many more individuals can perform tasks that once required this elite skillset, bridging gaps in areas like prototyping and synthesis.”
Wicks acknowledges the experimental nature of the initiative, but he said the potential benefits – including access to hard-to-reach professionals and cost-effective practice opportunities – justify the risk.
The broader imperative is clear: AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, and product leaders need fluency with these tools to remain competitive.
“We know that's where it's going,” Wicks said. “AI is out of the bottle. You need to be fluent in these tools, and they are evolving every day.”