Execution based creative roles are declining sharply while the roles that need creative judgement hold steady. Which means creatives now have to foreground their judgement to get hired, and finish a portfolio to show it. Both these tasks are linked and no tool available treats them that way. Articurate does.
AI crept into the agency and quickly changed what was asked for and discussed in meetings.
How were these changes affecting not just creative jobs, but the individuals behind them? Eighteen creative professionals across roles and seniorities, asked how they felt and how they were adapting.
Across all eighteen interviews came some version of "if AI now does most of what I used to do, then what work remains mine?"
Senior professionals spoke about taste. Junior professionals felt under pressure to develop it faster than it develops.
Creatives had always let the work speak for them. AI broke the credibility of that signal, so the thinking underneath it now has to be said out loud.
The first tool tracked creative contributions inside project management software. It slipped into feeling like surveillance, and it needed organisations to buy something only individuals benefit from.
So the question turned around: how do you help creatives surface the value of decisions they have already made?
An adaptive prototype asked the user questions about any project they were proud of. Sixteen people tested it. Creatives knew more about their work than they could say out loud, and elicitation could close that gap.
A web tool that takes your past work in whatever shape it exists, and asks what constrained you, what you decided, what you rejected, what you added that nobody asked for. First project by project, then across all of them.
It mirrors the answers back as named skills, in your own words. That cross-project view is the Mirror, and it stays live as you add work, so portfolio publishing becomes a click.
This was my master's thesis project, and I am continuing to build it because the feedback I have had points clearly to a need for the product. I initiated the inquiry, ran the research and interviews, built the prototypes for testing, and branded the product. The backend framework and the front-end UX design are what I plan to take on next.
Live at articurate.netlify.app. V2 was rebuilt against what alpha testing V1 exposed in the publishing layer, and the models underneath have caught up since.
Next: collaborators to tighten it, then back to Parsons to pilot with graduating students.
