AI, Unlocking the Future of Product Design
Introduction
As the Design industry evolves, so do the tools and technologies that shape it. One such transformative force is generative artificial intelligence (AI). This section explores how generative AI can revolutionize design processes, enhance creativity, and drive business outcomes for developing your design strategy.
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI goes beyond mere automation. It’s about augmentation and acceleration. Unlike traditional AI, which identifies and classifies information, generative AI creates new content. It leverages foundation models—such as GPT and Mid-Journey—to handle multiple complex tasks simultaneously. These algorithms can generate diverse forms of media, including text, images, audio, and simulations.
Product design and Generative AI
The design industry has only recently begun to explore generative AI, realistically its been just over a year. However, its potential impact is immense. Here are some key areas where generative AI can transform product design:
Product Innovation:
Generative AI enables codesigning by blending human creativity with machine-generated ideas. A few simple prompts can start the entire process. Further detail prompts can help further refine the product, creating photo-realistic images. It can also create 3-D designs and virtual models from a sketch for product reviews, accelerating the development process.
When I first started off in design years ago, it would take me days to sketch out a series of sketches for a new product concept. From there I’d spend days building a 3D CAD model in Alias Studio. The frustrating point then came down to the rendering time. Back in the 90’s this would generally take overnight to generate one rendering, which half the time wasn’t correct or presentable. In the 2000’s this dramatically improved with new rendering software such as KeyShot and others.
Now with the advent of AI rendering programs such as Midjourney and DALL-E 3 (more added almost weekly), with the correct prompts and inputs, within seconds you can get a series of photo realistic renderings that you can then start choosing and working with. This being said, it’s still up to designer to tweak and keep modifying the image output. These tools greatly speed up the design process but it still takes a trained eye to ensure the output is correct. From here designers can quickly narrow in on a series of designs that they can take to focus studios, senior management and engineering for feedback and approval.
Personally I feel strongly you should still start your design journey by sketching. Putting your ideas and thoughts to paper lets you work out a direction and set an overall tone to your work. If you have an established design system it lets you maintain cohesiveness with your product line. Rather than just jumping into an AI image generator and crossing your fingers for good results, you now have a pretty good starting point to work from. New AI image generators are just coming online that will take your line drawings and sketches and use these as a starting point. Again this lets the designer maintain control of the direction while greatly speeding up the entire process. A recent McKinsey article states that when used properly throughout product development you can see cycle time reduction by up to 70%.
Education: Understand generative AI’s capabilities and limitations, Youtube is your friend! All of the major tech companies now offer free courses and certifications on learning more about AI. Weekly AI meetups are taking place in most areas, both in person and virtually.
Experimentation: Pilot small projects to explore its potential. Divide and conquer. But constant review and setting guidelines is essential.
Collaboration: Work with AI experts and designers to co-create. Once again, experiment! And remember, Youtube is your friend!
Risks and Considerations
While generative AI offers tremendous benefits, studios must be aware of ethical implications, data privacy, and biases. Responsible implementation is crucial. Provide reference sources in your footnotes when available. Check and recheck your sources and verify!
In summary, generative AI isn’t just about automating tasks; it’s about unlocking creativity and shaping the future of design and product development. It still takes a trained eye to pick the right direction and make sure the design aligns with your companies direction and design language. Designers that embrace this technology can stay ahead of the curve and redefine design excellence.
Remember, the future of design lies at the intersection of human ingenuity and AI innovation.
