Through our year of research & experimentation we explored the following questions:
How should students approach and understand the use of AI in design?
How and where might AI add value to the design process?
What skills are becoming even more essential for design students?
See our answers and insights below.
1. How should students approach and understand the use of AI in design?
As a team, we established the following four Learning Outcomes to guide decisions about how, why, and when to use AI in Design Practice & Education. These became our North Star in structuring own activities and materials throughout this project.
Students should be equipped to ask and answer the following questions when considering the use of Generative AI tools in their education and their work:
Selected quotes from our research:
"Design is creating relationships… AI can do that, but it does it on its own algorithm." -Design faculty
"There’s so much pushback… but I think there should be new thinking about how to use that in your department." -Design student
“Education is a huge way to destigmatize people from not wanting to use it as a tool.” -Design student
"A big part of all of this is the judgment piece- where it makes sense and where it doesn’t." -Brooke Hopper, Design Professional
"AI amplifies skills but also deficits." -Clare, Design Professional
"We’re being told to jump on this train and we’re just going in blind." -Design student
"We should question it, but we need to be equipped to do so." -Design student
2. How and where might AI add value to the design process?
We centered our insights about the design process and design education on the Double-Diamond diagram because, regardless of how the design process evolves (without without AI), the practice of divergence, convergence, and iteration remain essential to relevant, ethical, quality design practice and education.
Selected quotes from our research:
"You can always improve visual skills, typography, ux design, that stuff is learned. But curiosity is harder to learn. If you’re curious you’ll learn." -Brook Hopper, Design Professional
"Articulation is really important. In a landscape so littered with things we don’t understand, to be able to articulate a process or need is really important." Clare, Design professional
What skills are becoming even more essential for design students?
Below, we dive further into our own design specialties of Industrial, Graphic, and Interaction Design.
Selected quotes from our research:
"Quick and easy way to mock something up and share it more broadly." -Design student
"To actually get something that can tell a great story has a great narrative, responds to standard design priciples, the pixel matters. Their jobs are changing, they’re not being replaced." -Brooke Hopper, Design Professional
"It can be helpful especially in the brainstorming stage to help you consider different perspectives that maybe you didn't consider initially." -Design student
"Quickening that stuff—tedious Photoshop work." -Design student
"It can’t make a bad idea good." -Design faculty
"You start to devalue your own thought process because you're so reliant on a machine." -Design student
"Number one skill: comfort with change and ambiguity. People comfortable experimenting, letting go of old ideologies." -Clare, Design Professional