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A Q&A with AI Proponent Juan Carlos Noguera

Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. Our founder and principal designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman has met many wonderful designers in her time in the industry, and in our Spotlight interviews we ask them about their work, their design journey, and what inspires them. In this interview we spoke with Juan Carlos Noguera, an industrial designer and design educator who focuses on creating holistic design solutions. He holds a masters in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a bachelor’s in industrial design from Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala city. He is well known for being the product design director at Voxel8, where he pioneered the development of the first 3D electronics printer, and he is a professor of industrial design at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he brings AI into the classroom. We asked him about how AI is changing design education, how to incorporate AI into the design process, and how he teaches students to use AI effectively and responsibly.

Q: Design has been revolutionized in the last decade by the emergence of sophisticated digital tools, the latest of which include powerful AI generators that we have barely begun to regulate. How have you seen design education changing in light of these developments?

A: I think the first knee-jerk reaction has been lots of fear from people, from faculty, especially because every time you read about AI and education in the same sentence, you hear about cheating and plagiarism and all of the very valid gray areas of AI. It’s a valid fear that people have. I think there are still a lot of things that need to be resolved regarding the regulation of intellectual property. These are ongoing conversations that I think we should definitely keep in mind. I’m a person who’s very excited about using AI in my classes. My personal perspective is that, if we are transparent about teaching incorporating AI into the projects that we teach, if we show students what AI can do really well, what the shortcomings of using AI in your process are, how your process can suffer from using AI — I think students will organically use it appropriately, because they want to reap the greatest benefit. If we give way to the hand wringing and fear and start prohibiting it in our classes, it starts becoming a problem.

I’ve had a chance to do things like faculty workshops here at RIT, where I try to start to dispel some of the fear around it. These systems are not black magic. There are mathematical models: they do these certain things really well, and they don’t do these other things very well. I start getting people to jump on board and feel a little bit more excited. So, I have seen a big sea change toward positivity from some people, but there are still a lot of fears. I think that’s the biggest battle right now. But let’s get people to embrace it because, if we don’t, students will use it anyway, and they’re not going to see the downsides if we don’t point them out.

Q: The role of AI tools, especially image generators, is not yet standardized in the industry. How do you see AI being incorporated into design education, and how do you see it being incorporated into the design process more broadly?

A: It’s always hard to visualize the future. I’m trying to think what may happen when the novelty wears off, at which point do we start seeing the net benefit of these tools existing? So, for education it means a few things. One is curricular change. We start rethinking what types of assignments get put into courses. Mechanical tasks that we used to ask students to do and that can easily be replaced by AI will get replaced by AI, whether you want it or not. So how do you get that learning out of more project-based work where students engage more in critical thinking. I think it’s a good thing, it also forces us as faculty to rethink things that were easy before. It’s going to force us to make some adjustments. Having faculty become experts in the area is hard, not everybody uses technology at that level. Some faculty are more reticent to start using it or to accept that it could be a tool.

Educational institutions are ships that are hard to steer because they’ve been going in one direction for a long time, and some people don’t want things to change. We’re a bit of a tribe as designers. You have to go through a right of passage of doing this one thing. What if that thing is no longer part of the process? We were just having a discussion at RIT. We’ve been using this AI tool called Vizcom a lot in class, and it’s basically jumping over the entire need for my students to get good at marker renderings. Now, if they have a great line drawing of their idea they pump it through Vizcom and get a good enough representation of the thing that is as good as their marker rendering would have been. So why would you learn that manual skill? There are a lot of moving parts to this, which is why I understand the frustration.

On the other hand, in industry, once that novelty wears off you’re going to start seeing these AI tools being built into things you already use. It’s going to make the tools you’re used to smarter. When you go into your CAD program, AI tools are going to be there to help you with tasks that, right now, you might consider tedious. I think Adobe in particular is really a great job at incorporating AI into their offerings. It’s naturally built into Photoshop and Illustrator, and they’re going to slowly expand on this. They’re not taking these tools and saying, Here’s AI added on top of them. They’re saying, Hey, here’s the fill tool you’ve been using for a while, we’ve made it smarter. I think that approach is very future-proof in particular. They’re calling it generative. It’s just an offshoot of their previous version. They’re doing a good job at softening that landing for people, saying, Now Photoshop does one more thing. As opposed to the crash people have when they open Chat GPT and get this ominous feeling of not knowing what is chatting back. People have a hard time getting over that. That feeling isn’t there with Adobe products. I think we will see more of that and less of the inaccessible version.

Q: It can be challenging to use AI tools efficiently and effectively. At what point(s) in your design process do you find AI tools most valuable?

A: I have found that at least some of the generative tools I’ve been using so far in my practice, and also in class with my students, are really great during the ideation phase in a number of ways. Image generation software like Midjourney and Dall-E have been great at helping teams communicate. I had a chance to do a project with artisans from my home country, Guatemala. They do bronze castings. They typically work with a designer, and the designer is up here and they’re down here, just making the thing. It feels like a very top-down relationship. We recently jumped on a Zoom call and used Dall-E to communicate visual ideas. We went back and forth and just used that as a communication tool. It really helped level the conversation field. Dall-E is almost like an automated journey mapping or storyboarding tool, so it’s great for teams. I also think image generators have great potential when a designer is just hunkered down ideating. It’s an endless firehose of stuff. And that could be good or bad, depending. But let’s say you’re tasked with designing a plywood chair, right? It’s almost like having the key to the plywood chair museum. You can ask for plywood chairs all day and you will get all these different things that are plywood chairs. Some of them will be good, some of them will be garbage. But you’ll have an endless stream of images to look at and get inspired by, which can help you work through a block. It’s like the stimulation of going to a museum. It’s more targeted, because you get to input what you want, but the mechanism is the same. So, I think it’s going to make us more efficient.

I’ve pretty much absorbed it into my workflow. It really helps me visualize specific situations as well. It’s even helped me visualize situations for my client. I’m working right now on an underwater robot model for a client. I had the CAD model for the bot and and my own rendering, and I fed it to Midjourney and said, I want this thing to be underwater on the ship hull. And Midjourney did a beautiful job of putting my object underwater and on the ship hull. That’s the kind of thing that would be very time consuming to do. All of that sort of mechanical work is not going to be client facing anyway. It’s automated now, so it’s taking away some of the more painful parts of what I do, which is what automation should do, right? I think people are worried because this is now automation for the mind, and that’s a strange concept.

Q: How do you guide students to incorporate AI into their process ethically and in a way that preserves the integrity of their ideas? What are some of the common pitfalls in AI use that you see as a design educator?

A: I think it’s important to have students use it and also kind of crash and fail with it. I like to start with very open questions and assignments when we work with AI, so that they can see that the direct output from the system is not something they can use.

First of all, they have to understand how it works. So we go ahead and talk about how a diffusion system for image generation works, how it’s been trained. The data set is owned by everyone in the world. And what you’re getting is basically reprocessed data that’s combined based on your text input, but the information is coming from unknown sources. All of these different software companies are very opaque about how their software works. This means that any output that you get from the AI, you can consider that the same way you consider the results of a Google image search. You see the results. You might find something inspiring. It’s not something you want to use directly. That’s the first thing. It’s a great way to remix things in unexpected ways and find unexpected and inspiration. But they have to remember: this is just an echo chamber of everything that’s out there in the world. If you actually want to generate something new, you can’t use that output, because that’s not how the system works. You won’t get something new, it’s just giving you information from its data set. I’ve tried to get students to use it as a way to generate rich mood boards and inspiration boards as opposed to trying to get form from it.

Prompt engineering is on the horizon of being an actual profession. Out of all of these systems I like to have students play with Chat GPT. It’s a great way to train your thought process. They need to learn how to ask things from AI systems. You can give it a lot of context and get really great results back. We did this experiment in class where I said, Okay, I’m going to write a letter or recommendation for one of you, which is a task that I do as a teacher all the time. And at first I just asked Chat GPT directly, I want a letter of recommendation for this student. The student is an industrial design student. It gave me something professional and polite, a very generic letter of recommendation that sounded like a template, it sounded robotic. It was bad, it was not something usable. On the other hand, we repeated the exercise. We started describing my relationship to one student in the class. I said, Hey, Chat GPT, my name is Juan. I’m an industrial design professor. I come from Guatemala. I’ve worked on this and that before, these are my interests. You describe them in a couple sentences. And I said, I met the student last semester. They took my drawing class. They did this. The prompt was probably as long as the letter that I needed to write but I wasn’t trying to word it well. I had grammatical errors. I was being very casual about just telling it a lot of information. The language model is great at processing that. And then after that I just said, Knowing all that, please write a letter of recommendation for this person. And that letter was amazing. It was great. I would not guess it was written by AI. I seemed connected, like I really knew the student wanted to speak to the things they did. When you do an exercise like that, the students really see the power of the right prompt. They see, okay, I need to get context, I need to think carefully about keywords and information and try to frame my thoughts. After that, they start using the tool in more creative ways.

I use the tools in class as much as possible to try to take away the shame element of using AI. I say, Use it as much as you want. You just need to tell me when you use it. You need to cite it almost as if you’re citing a source for an image or anything else you’re putting in your paper. I want to know which steps used it, and how that helped inform your design decisions. Once we get that established, they feel more at home using it. They know that they’re not cheating, it’s not plagiarism. They’re using it, they’re being transparent about what they got from it, what they couldn’t get from it, and what failed.

Q: What reaction are you seeing from the students? I know there can be costs to using these tools.

A: Yeah, there’s grumbling on the cost, but the same way that we’ve been grumbling about the cost of software forever. The same way I grumbled about paying $100 a year for my Keyshot subscription. Or when I finally graduated from school and realized that my professional license for SolidWorks was $5,000. Students here at RIT don’t get free Adobe licenses, they have to have their own. And that’s always a problem. So, that really hasn’t changed.

One thing I do notice that is a source of frustration is going back to curriculum and course development. They now start seeing, Okay, here’s this tool, and it does the thing that you’re teaching me how to do by hand. So why are you teaching me this again? It feels redundant to them. I think that has been the most painful part of it for my students, just trying to figure out: What is the skill set of a designer in the end? What’s desirable when I go out into the world? Should I have AI skills? I might not be getting them from the school. Do I have to get them on my own? Should they be in my CV? All these things are a source of frustration.

Q: How do you see the relationship between AI and design education developing in the near future?

A: That’s a great question that I don’t have a very solid answer for. Last semester we had about five or six different faculty forums about what’s going to happen with AI and education. Universities are wrestling with how to tackle it and these tools are popping up that are really unexpected, like Vizcom. It basically showed up a couple of weeks before we started the semester and it really made us think, Should we try to retool the entire design drawing class we’re teaching this semester? Because they’re going to use this and wonder why they need to learn how to work with Copic markers. Those are valid questions, because… is this a skill that is no longer relevant?

We need to ask those hard questions. That’s definitely on the horizon because I think this is significant enough that we’re going to need to rethink many parts of our curriculum and how we do things in education. We can’t treat it like a piece of software. We have to treat it as the sea change that it is. It’s very fast-paced, and we don’t know what other tools will pop up. They’re going to replace everyday tasks. This has already started to happen. When I went to school, I did three semesters of technical drawing. Giant board with a parallel ruler. That now feels like it was a waste of time, but that was the industry standard when I went to school. That change happened gradually, but this is happening fast, and I think that’s the big difference.

The school-wide policy in most schools that I’ve seen has been very nebulous. It’s mostly been about trying to give faculty a little bit of power over how to use AI in their class. The syllabi that we use now have language that says that the faculty get to say when AI is appropriate or not, or that it’s not to be used unless the faculty instructs the students to use it. This leaves the door open for usage while still trying to be cautious. institutions are trying to use caution, which is natural, right? But there should be a sense of urgency. And that really depends on who you ask.

I would say generally that industrial designers are overall super excited. Very happy. They can see lots of applications, things that can help us. If you’re a graphic designer, you’re less excited. If you’re Illustrator, you’re definitely not very excited about this at all. A concept artist? You don’t want this at all. It really depends on your specific area of interest and also your industry. There are a few industries that might be more directly affected by this existing. If you work in an industry with a very specialized knowledge base, soft goods for example, I would be less worried. If you work in another area, maybe traditional consumer goods, plastics, it’s hard to tell.

I’m very optimistic and see great benefits using AI in my work. It frees me up for what I consider the more critical parts of designing, like trying to be user-centric, trying to be sustainable in my decisions. It’s reducing the workload of things I don’t like to do, which is what automation should do. Not everyone is that optimistic, but I see good historical precedents for this. When photography was invented, everybody thought, This is going to destroy painting. Most painters were tradespeople, because painting was a way to do naturalistic documentation. But the rise of photography spurred painting as an art form, and all these different currents, like impressionism and cubism. It was a documentation tool that was taken over by this other, more automated thing: photography.

When they invented the sewing machine, they thought, It’s going to replace the people that create clothes. And there were strikes and all this resistance. It took 30 years for it to catch on. And people realize, no, the sewing machine just makes people that make clothes more efficient. It drives up quality, it ends up being a good thing. But there’s a lot of fear.

When we started having records for music, musicians unions got the radio station consortium of New York to play records one time and then destroy them. Because before that, music was live, right? So you have to pay the band for every play. Records took that away. So buying one record for each play was the way that they saw out of it. There’s always a clash but, in the end, all of these technologies helped make things progress. I think that’s what’s going to happen here.

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AI and Creativity in Design

The intersection of AI and creativity

Our generation has a front row seat to the head-on collision of the wild world of artificial intelligence and the infinite realm of human creativity. The intersection yields new ideas and art forms, inspires designers to push boundaries, and revolutionizes the way we approach design. It’s a collaboration that can potentially amplify the power of both AI and human creativity, opening up a universe of possibilities, both promising and ominous, that we are only beginning to explore. In this Insight article we are going to talk about artificial intelligence in a specific realm of creativity: design. AI isn’t just crunching numbers and analyzing data. Through access to vast stores of information, AI can unearth hidden patterns, uncover trends, and present designers with fresh perspectives might not have been considered otherwise. At its best, it prompts designers to think beyond the obvious and explore uncharted territories. There are many levels of intervention, from tools that generate options within a set of given constraints to tools that analyze complex briefs to offer smart, targeted suggestions to tools that can generate complete, considered designs.

Basic AI-Powered Tools

AI-powered design tools have been around for a long time, but they are getting reframed with the growing understanding of AI. These tools can offer powerful short-cuts in the creative world, streamlining workflows and elevating design quality. They can analyze large amounts of data, identify patterns, and suggest design elements. Tools like automated color palette generators that create harmonious combinations and intelligent layout assistants that optimize space have the potential to save time and effort, rapidly running through options that the designer can keep or discard.

AI Tools for Creativity and Productivity

One good example of an AI tool that stimulates creativity in the design process is Adobe Sensei. Powered by machine learning algorithms, Adobe Sensei is integrated into various Adobe Creative Cloud applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. This AI tool analyzes large datasets of images, fonts, and design elements to provide designers with intelligent suggestions and recommendations. It can automatically generate alternative design options, offer font pairing suggestions, and even provide automated image enhancements. By leveraging the power of AI, Adobe Sensei helps designers explore new ideas and experiment with different design directions. This can greatly increase the output of a designer and the number of options available to them.

AI tools for brainstorming and ideation

AI-based brainstorming and ideation tools are changing the way we generate and explore ideas. These tools leverage the power of artificial intelligence to enhance the creative process. By analyzing data, trends, and patterns, AI algorithms can provide designers and teams with valuable insights and inspiration. These tools can suggest unique combinations, identify emerging concepts, and even predict potential user preferences. They have the potential to overcome creative blocks, spark new connections, and encourage out-of-the-box thinking. At their best, they can help to fuel the ideation process, ultimately leading to more innovative and impactful design outcomes.

An example of an AI-based brainstorming and ideation tool is Mural. Mural is a digital collaboration platform that integrates AI-powered features to facilitate brainstorming and idea generation. These features can analyze user input and provide real-time suggestions, prompts, and inspiration to fuel the creative process. It offers a range of interactive visual templates, virtual sticky notes, and design thinking frameworks to facilitate ideation sessions. By leveraging AI, Mural enables teams to collaborate remotely and harness the collective creativity of its members. It encourages diverse thinking, breaks down geographical barriers, and enhances productivity in the ideation phase.

Successful collaborations with AI

AI can also rise above tool status to serve as an active collaborator in the design process. An example of a successful collaboration between AI and designers is the partnership between NVIDIA and Autodesk. NVIDIA, known for its advancements in AI and graphics processing, collaborated with Autodesk, a leading software company, to develop a tool called Project Dreamcatcher. This AI-powered design tool combines generative design algorithms with human creativity to power the design process.

Project Dreamcatcher enables designers to input design goals and constraints, and the AI algorithm generates design options based on those parameters. The generated designs are then evaluated by the designer, who can provide feedback and further refine the options. This iterative collaboration between the AI and the designer results in optimized designs that meet specific requirements while incorporating innovative and unexpected elements. The tool augments the designer’s creativity and problem-solving abilities, allowing them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. This collaboration between AI and designers not only accelerates the design process but also yields designs that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. It demonstrates how AI can enhance human creativity and provide designers with the tools to generate innovative solutions.

AI-generated design

So far we’ve seen algorithms that can generate art, craft logos, and even design interiors. AI is redefining the creative industry as we know it. One interesting case study of AI-generated design is the project by the team at OpenAI called DALL-E. They developed an AI model that can generate surreal images from text prompts. With DALL-E, you describe an image you want to see, like “a purple cat with butterfly wings sitting on a rainbow,” and the AI algorithm will generate a unique image that matches your description, though not always in a way you can predict. This innovative application of AI-generated design encourages designers to bring their wildest ideas to life. This is a good example of how AI is pushing the boundaries of creativity and generating original, or, controversially, semi-original designs.

Potential concerns and challenges

While AI has tremendous potential in the field of design, there are also valid concerns and challenges that need to be addressed. One major concern is the potential loss of human creativity and originality. As AI becomes more involved in the design process, there is a risk that designs may become formulaic and lack the unique touch of human ingenuity. Another challenge is the ethical implications of AI-generated designs. Issues such as intellectual property rights, ownership of AI-generated creations, and potential biases embedded in the algorithms used by AI systems need careful consideration. Additionally, the impact on employment is a concern, as some fear that AI could replace human designers, leading to job displacement. Lastly, ensuring the transparency and interpretability of AI-generated designs is crucial, as designers and users need to understand how AI arrived at specific design decisions. Addressing these concerns and challenges is essential to foster a responsible and beneficial integration of AI in the design industry.

Summary

The transformative potential of AI in design is undeniably remarkable. AI has the power to revolutionize the creative process, unlocking new realms of imagination, and enabling designers to push boundaries and explore uncharted territories. From AI-generated designs that inspire to intelligent tools that stimulate creativity, AI is reshaping the design landscape. That said, it is crucial to approach AI in design with thoughtful consideration, addressing concerns around originality, ethics, employment, and transparency. By embracing AI as a tool that complements human creativity rather than replaces it, we can harness its transformative power to create designs that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also sustainable, user-centric, and innovative. As AI continues to evolve, designers must embrace responsible innovation, collaboration, and ethical guidelines to fully harness its potential for the betterment of the design industry and society as a whole.

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Designs Created by AI

The Smart List is a monthly list of multi-media recommendations on everything design, curated by Interwoven Design. As a group of aesthetically obsessed designers, there are a lot of beautiful products, objects and events we love and enjoy. These recommendations make our daily lives special and inviting and we want to share them with you. This issue is a guide to Designs Created by AI!

NASA’s new AI generated parts

NASA has submersed themselves in incorporating artificial intelligence, much like the kind we have all experimented with in creating images, text, and music based on human prompts. These one of a kind components, known as Evolved Structures, are now being integrated into space-bound equipment. This remarkable lineup includes astrophysics balloon observatories, Earth-atmosphere scanners, planetary instruments, and space telescopes. Designers, harnessing the power of CAD software such as Autodesk, nTopology, and Divergent3D, have been delving into the realm of generative capabilities for years. According to Ryan McClelland, a research engineer at NASA, these awe-inspiring structures, influenced by science fiction shows, have been meticulously generated using precise prompts. He further highlights that conventional manufacturing tools are typically not deemed capable of producing such unique parts. As McClelland aptly puts it, “Most people would simply find it hard to believe that these parts could be created through that process—until someone actually did it.”

via Fast Company

Sneakers designed with H.U.E. by DeepObjects and PUMA

Deep Objects began on a groundbreaking mission to develop an AI engine that relied heavily on human input. Operating covertly for nearly two years, the creative studio known as FTR has been at the forefront of this project. This “decentralized design studio” takes a million potential solutions and distills them into a singular outcome. Enter the Hueristic Unsupervised Entity (H.U.E.), an engine that has astoundingly showcased an array of sneaker variations. The creators elucidate that this tool serves as a means to explore, engage, and scrutinize technology in order to unleash creativity and advance the field of design. Deep Objects elaborates, stating, “Now, people and designers alike are actively and massively engaging with it, which holds immense power. At Deep Objects, our aim is to investigate how a more controlled and proactive relationship between designers, AI, and ‘consumers’ can yield extraordinary design objects.”

via HIGHSNOBIETY

Paragraphica Text-to-Image Camera

Paragraphica, an innovative camera powered by artificial intelligence, has emerged as a remarkable creation. Devised by Bjørn Karmann, this lensless camera employs location data to provide users with real-time descriptions of their surroundings, which are then transformed into distinctive visual representations of the scenes. Equipped with buttons, the camera allows users to control the collection of surrounding data, including weather conditions and points of interest. These parameters grant users the ability to govern both the description and the resulting image. Karmann elaborates, stating, “Interestingly the photos do capture some reminiscent moods and emotions from the place but in an uncanny way, as the photos never really look exactly like where I am.”

via Designboom

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Views on the Impact of AI

The article “Views on the Impact of AI”, written by Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, was published in the Spring 2023 Issue of Innovation Magazine.

The IDSA Women in Design Committee’s vision is to have gender parity in our industry. One way we work toward this goal is to amplify voices. In this article, Views on the Impact of AI, we have view points from women and nonbinary designers who are emerging into the profession and establishing their career. The WID Committee welcomes thought, support, and feedback at wid@idsa.org.

INNOVATION is the voice of the industrial design profession, providing in-depth coverage of industrial design issues and communicating the value of design to business and society at large. This award-winning quarterly is generously illustrated with images of cutting-edge designs and features a clean yet dynamic layout that brings editorials and top-notch content to life. The magazine was first published in 1982, and IDSA members consistently name INNOVATION as a primary benefit of their membership experience to this day. Want to read more? Access to the latest issues of INNOVATION magazine here!

From Sci-Fi Fem-Bots to Sustainable Design

When the topic of artificial intelligence comes to mind, I can’t help but think of the sci-fi fem-bots that have been featured in movies like Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and Her. These films, among others, have often portrayed women as the conduit for artificial intelligence. As a result, I became curious about how women industrial designers view the impact of Al on their profession, so I decided to ask a group of women in the field for their thoughts.

What’s the Consensus?

Overwhelmingly, the message I heard was that artificial intelligence is not a replacement for human designers. While Al can automate routine tasks and provide data driven insights, it cannot replace the creativity, intuition, and empathy that are essential to good design. Rather, Al should be viewed as a tool that complements and assists human designers, enabling them to produce more compelling and innovative products. As Milja Bannwart, an industrial design consultant and creative director based in Brooklyn, NY, explains, “There are many aspects that a designer incorporates into the design of a product. There is a story to be told, the emotional impact on users, consumer testing and research, form and color, the quality of materials used, and craftsmanship.” By using Al in combination with human creativity, designers can unlock new possibilities and produce products that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Furthermore, according to Lorraine Justice, PhD, FIDSA design researcher, author, and professor of industrial design at RIT, Some people believe that Al will transform designers into mere curators or arbiters of design, rather than original creators. However, this is only one aspect of the potential options for this technology. The human desire to create will always exist, and designers will continue to use any available tools to create better designs.

According to Yukiko Naoi, principal at Tanaka Kapec Design Group in Norwalk CT, Al could serve as a valuable tool for collaboration in industrial design. She believes that in any creative process, any input or specific angle of seeing things is valuable and that Al could provide a viewpoint that individual designers may overlook. “Al’s ability to offer fresh perspectives could be particularly useful in industrial design,” says Naoi.

Al is a great tool to automate many of the routine tasks involved in industrial design, such as creating 3D models, rendering product images, and analyzing user data. This can free up designers’ time to focus on more complex and creative aspects of the design process. According to Ana Mengote Baluca, IDSA, a faculty member at Pratt Institute, designers should approach the use of Al with a healthy dose of skepticism. While relying too heavily on Al may be risky, Mengote Baluca acknowledges that the technology shows promise in exploring new forms for products: “My big concern about Al is that it will drive trends and affect the aesthetics of what we create. If the algorithms are written in a way that promotes what is popular, then that wilI become the next big thing. I worry that we will lose diversity in style and in aesthetics if we rely on Al too much.” Naoi adds, “Just like any tool, it depends on how we use it. If we rely only too heavily then some of the outcomes will be too obvious computer driven.”

Image generated with DALL-E using the prompt “A female industrial designer dressed as a sci-fi fem bot standing in a design office retro 60’s art.”

Challenges and Opportunities

Naturally, there is a lot of apprehension about how AI will affect the design process. Al has the potential to transform our lives in many positive ways, from improving healthcare and transportation to enhancing education and entertainment. However, there are also valid concerns about the impact of Al on humanity, including job displacement, privacy concerns, and ethical issues. To address these concerns and ensure that the use of Al in industrial design is responsible and beneficial, it’s essential to establish ethical guidelines and standards for Al development and implementation. It’s also important to involve all stakeholders, including designers, engineers, consumers, and policymakers, in the conversation about Al’s role in design. By doing so, we can maximize the potential benefits of Al while minimizing the potential risks and unintended consequences. When discussing the impact of Al on industrial design, Jeanne Pfordresher, partner at Hybrid Product Design in Brooklyn, NY, adds, “Al has tremendous potential for creativity, and if we can address the ethical issues surrounding it, even better.” Ultimately, the successful integration of Al in industrial design will require collaboration, transparency, and responsible innovation.

One of the biggest challenges facing designers today is how to create products that are both functional and environmentally responsible. Al has the potential to enable more sustainable and environmentally friendly product design. For example, Al can be used to model a product’s life cycle and predict its carbon footprint, allowing designers to identify areas where they can reduce emissions and improve sustainability. Additionally, Al can help designers to optimize material use, design products for disassembly and reuse, and create more energy-efficient designs.

Finding efficiencies in massive amounts of data is a time-consuming task that is ideally suited for Al. Industrial designers can leverage this technology to create more sustainable designs and more efficient supply chains, which can help to mitigate the negative impact of human activity on the environment.” Al can help us manage supply chains and reduce inefficiencies,” says Mengote Baluca, adding that “by creating decision-making tools for designers, we can make more conscious choices.”

Al can significantly improve the design process by leveraging vast amounts of data on user preferences, market trends, and product performance. This enables designers to create more efficient and effective designs that better meet the needs of customers. Bannwart recommends “integrating Al at the outset of the design process to analyze data and identify trends, conduct consumer and competitor research, and even generate concept ideas. In later phases, Al can also be useful for creating design variations, accelerating the process, and experimenting with form generation for the sake of exploration.”

Many products in the market today have used Al in their design and development. Adidas used Al to design and manufacture the Futurecraft 4D shoe. The shoe’s midsole was created using a 3D printing process that was optimized with Al algorithms to create a lattice structure that is both lightweight and strong. Apple used a combination of machine learning and acoustic simulations to design the AirPods Pro. Al algorithms helped optimize the fit and seal of the earbuds and create the noise-canceling technology that is one of the AirPods Pro’s key features. Al also has great potential for creating better user experiences in products. For example, Dyson used Al to design the Pure Cool Link air purifier, which can automatically detect and respond to changes in air quality. Al algorithms were used to optimize the performance of the air purifier and create a user interface that is intuitive and easy to use.

Al is rapidly becoming an integral part of the industrial design process. While I don’t believe Al will or should replace human designers, I do think that by establishing and following ethical guidelines for Al development and usage, we can leverage Al into helping designers create products that are not only functional and aesthetically pleasing but also sustainable and environmentally responsible.

Design News N. 037

The Interwoven Design News is your tiny dose of design, technology and other important news, curated monthly by Interwoven. In this Interwoven Design News series we share the latest on our favorite topics, including product design, installation design, furniture Collaboration, sculpture and AI generated images. This issue includes: Varmblixt by Sabine Marcelis x IKEA, Watches & Wonders 2023, Janny Baek at Culture Object, Isamu Noguchi: Sculpting the World and AI generated images!

*The finesse of time*, by artist Clément Vieille. Photo courtesy of Hermès

Watches & Wonders 2023

Watches and Wonders Geneva, the international watch and jewelry show that takes place in Geneva, Switzerland features the newly introduced the breathtaking Hermès H08 existing in the sculptural installation, The finesse of time, by artist Clément Vieille.

The Hermès H08 is a collection that was originally released in 2021 and designed by Creative Director, Philippe Delhotal, on 3 different head watches. The new line’s new aesthetic combines a perfect mixture of texture, material usage, and geometrical shapes on the Chronograph. The H08’s function does not take a backseat while the watch’s mechanical self-winding movement is framed by a light carbon fiber and composite shell along with careful highlights that color matches the watch’s band perfectly.

Clément Vieille explains his inspiration for the environment which he designed for the trade show’s location. His carefully designed flowing sculptures are suspended from the ceiling while exploring the potential of controlling time. Even though impossible, can time be captured, can it be tamed? All these motivations are shared between Hermès and Clément Vieille, the two design collections complement each other in a beautiful way.”

via Design Boom

Varmblixt by Sabine Marcelis x IKEA

Award winning designer, Sabine Marcelis has recently released a collaboration with the Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA! Their collection named, Varmblixt was revealed at Milan Design Week and features a beautiful plethora of homeware that includes sculptural lighting pieces and a glassware collection. The Dutch-Kiwi designer showcases her aesthetic by, “embracing vibrant, playful hues and employing pure forms to highlight the often unique materiality of her pieces.” An impactful feature to a viewer is Marcelis’ use of material combinations that cause people to want to take a closer look. Traditionally, the products that provide light have been designed with a utilitarian mindset. Sabine Marcelis strived to rethink the way lighting pieces live in a home and how it exists in space. Taking a more artistic approach, the team was able to step away from functionality as the only trait to design with a different perspective in mind. Overall, the collection aims to bring a warmth to the home atmosphere.

Varmblixt’s glassware collection refrains from using color. The designer explains that she wants the drink of choice to activate the use of color. The specific collection had been dreamt up in the past, years ago to be exact, and has finally come to life! Check out the collaboration at the link below.

via International Contemporary Furniture Fair

Janny Baek at Culture Object, New York

Janny Baek, a Korean-American artist and architect is presenting her first solo exhibition from March 22, 2023 to May 20, 2023 at Cultural Object in Manhattan! The artist studied ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design and then pursued a master’s degree of architecture from Harvard University. Baek along with her husband, Thomas McMahon, founded McMahon-Baek Architecture in 2014 and she continues to help run along with her ceramics practice that she revamped in 2019.

When creating her striking ceramics, Baek uses a traditional process that involves stacking clay and later slicing cross-sections to expose a hidden interior pattern. She sometimes alters this process, called Nerikomi, by treating the colored clay as a pattern or colored sheets on the surface of the form. Using different aesthetic techniques including colored layered surfaces producing gradients. Baek explains how creates with a purpose, “my sculpted ceramic forms are based on the themes of growth, flux, and other various states of in-between.” This effect helps the artist express vibrancy, pleasure and hope through artificial coloring but with clay. The artist shared, “ultimately, I hope that my work communicates the wonder and importance of questioning assumptions and being curious: about ourselves, our world, and our future.”

via Wallpaper

Isamu Noguchi: Sculpting the World

The Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) is featuring Isamu Noguchi for its 40th Anniversary. The LaM is one of the most influential museums in Europe while being positioned between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and London.

The Exhibition is currently featuring over 250 of Noguchi’s works spanning sculpture drawings, designs, photography and other forms of art. From an artist who has continued to make an impact throughout art history even after his death in 1988, “Noguchi embodies an open and decompartmentalised vision of art, which even today, influences contemporary creation.”

Noguchi’s mother was from the United States while his father was Japanese. He spent his childhood in Japan and later living in the United States and moved to Paris to become the assistant sculptor to Constantin Brâcusi. The artist struggled to find an identity while living in multiple cultures and dealing with the dramas of his time. This motivated his exploration and work as he submerged himself in different art genres and movements. Isamu Noguchi’s passion was to go beyond art and attempted to study connection and relationship with space and body.

Via Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM)

The Pope Drip, Photo: u/trippy_art_special via Reddit

AI images take the Internet by Storm

If you have spent any time on social media in the last few months, we are sure that you have come across some type of AI generated art. Whether they are portraits of friends or family members morphed with historic or fiction themes. These realistic looking images are so believable that only some can actually validate an AI generated image at first glance. One image in particular that has caused an uproar from people on social media dubbed, The Pope Drip. The AI generated image features the Pope wearing an iconic puffer full length jacket. He is even holding Mate! A traditional herbal tea from his home country of Argentina.

There’s no doubt that AI generated images are very entertaining and interesting to see how people will utilize this technology with their own creativity. Where will this technology inspire us to go? Will it provide us with a new continually used tool or will it be abused? Only time will tell.

via Designboom

That sums up this month’s Interwoven Design News, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn for design news, multi-media recommendations, and to learn more about product design and development!