AI in Design
Artificial intelligence systems have slowly been integrating into design processes throughout the product development industry. This covers most design disciplines including user experience design (UX), user interface design (UI), and industrial design (ID). Major companies such as Adobe and SOLIDWORKS have already successfully integrated AI into some of their most popular software.
With AI on the rise, some may wonder if it will replace the role of a designer. While AI tools are clever they cannot replace the skills provided by design experts. Designers should consider AI as a tool that helps them produce a more streamlined and efficient design process.
AI in User Experience Design
Designers carry the ability to understand the nuances of human perspective, empathy, social skills, and creativity. Even the best AI tools today are missing these key abilities. Only by designers combining their knowledge with AI can increased efficiency and optimization be reached. For example, AI tools can...
Help UX designers automate tedious tasks such as data collection.
Identify patterns and key “Moments of Interest” (MOI) in large sets of qualitative and quantitative data.
Provide unbiased user analysis to help generate more objective data synthesizing.
Alleviate pain points when recruiting participants for surveys or setting up test environments during user research.
AI is not here to replace designers but to serve as a tool for them to help create winning designs more quickly. With practice, it can lead to a much more streamlined process ultimately creating more cost-effective solutions for a project.
AI in User Interface Design
When it comes to UI design, AI can help reduce time spent on tedious and redundant tasks such as resizing or cropping images. This allows the designers to focus more on the creative side of the process. Generating a wide variety of concepts in a shorter time frame.
Although some AI design tools exist that can produce various design suggestions, they should not be considered final directions. It is still up to the designers’ vision and expertise to harness and complete the design. Altering features, order of operations, and visual hierarchy to optimize how users interact with their devices.
AI in Industrial Design
AI in industrial design has many useful purposes. There are AI tools that can serve as supplementary tools for designers in the early concept phases.
Tools such as Vizcom can take a loose hand sketch and turn it into rendered product ideas in seconds. Although these renders may look polished, they are merely communicating loose concepts at a higher fidelity. Key considerations that affect ergonomics, manufacturability, and user experience are missing.
Other tools such as Solidworks Simulation can use AI to assist designers in improving structural integrity and performance in the CAD development phase. This has been crucial in allowing engineers to predict and optimize designs before going to production.
Understanding the use of AI
As technology in AI grows, design teams should see it as a powerful asset within their company. However, it is important for them to not abuse this technology. Relying on it too heavily can lead to designs that overlook some of the most important qualities.
Design professionals are responsible for making a product or service aesthetically pleasing, usable, and intuitive. AI cannot achieve that on its own so design expertise is needed to fill the gap. Designers are able to comprehend the human nuances, facilitate intuitive understanding, and empathize with users.
Tools are always evolving alongside technology and it has always been the designer's job to understand how to use them. Some still may see AI as a designer's main competition, but in reality, it can only benefit them.