Designing in the age of AI

AI promises progress and democratisation of the design process. But while AI is increasingly embedded in objects and human interaction, and has proved itself an efficient design tool, how inclusive is AI, and what are the opportunities as well as limitations? For example, AI tools now enable personalisation at scale and clients commonly use AI to brief designers. But while AI widens participation in the design process, research suggests AI tools are most benefitting designers who are already high performers. That is, designers who have mastered AI-enhanced design thinking coupled with critical judgement. Yet extensive use of AI tools by entry-level designers might erode traditional craft skills and habits of critical, independent thinking, and imagination. Or, why struggle with a problem when a chatbot can provide a neat, packaged response? What then is a largely uncritical or unexamined AI response doing to design thinking and creativity, that is, cognitive effort? Man shapes AI and then AI shapes man? Indeed what makes a designer in the age of AI?

Prompting is creative communication

The creative abilities of GenAI models are artificial, not genuinely human. However, with human assistance, GenAI can produce creative content. But, as shown in experiments, GenAI (DALL-E3) output, which are clear and measurable, depend on user prompts (written instructions) as much as models*. This highlights how prompting is about communication which in turn reflects how verbalisation (words) is the most common means of human communication. This in turn suggests prompting is a creative process as well as a skill - a skill that improve with practice. In short, GenAI models need human intervention to produce independent creative output. *https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-generative-ai-results-depend-user-prompts-much-models