AI's Impact on Design

With AI on the rise, we have to ask ourselves what does the future of design and product development hold with AI?

As technology continues to advance, we see more and more industries embracing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their processes. The design industry is no exception. In fact, Hatch Duo believes that AI has the potential to transform the design industry in significant ways. However, it's essential to understand both the advantages and disadvantages of AI to truly take advantage of this futuristic tool and integrate it into one's design process.

In this blog post, we'll explore why Hatch Duo thinks AI is here to stay in the design industry and how it will affect designers' work. We'll discuss the benefits of using AI in design, such as automating repetitive tasks, increasing efficiency and accuracy, and generating innovative design iterations in minutes. We'll also delve into the limitations of AI, such as its inability to replace human creativity and decision-making capabilities.

We'll explore how designers can use AI as a tool to augment their creativity and design skills, rather than a substitute for them. We'll look at examples of how AI is already being used in the design industry and the potential for AI to address industry needs, trends, and pain points.

At the end of the day, design is human-centric, and the tools we use to shape our understanding around human pain points should optimize this thinking rather than supplement it. As we continue to integrate AI into our design processes, it's crucial to remain mindful of its limitations and use it as a tool to enhance our creativity and design skills, not replace them.

While AI can generate new designs, it can't replicate the creativity and imagination of human designers. AI algorithms are limited to what they have been trained on and may struggle to create designs that are entirely original. Thus, AI should be used as a tool to aid the development of concepts and as such designers should not rely on these tools to think for them. Designers study how to think and approach problems, if we rely on technology to supplement it too much we can lose our connection to the human elements within design. We lose touch with reality. 

AI algorithms also rely on large amounts of data to make accurate predictions and decisions. If the data used to train an AI algorithm is biased or incomplete, it can lead to inaccurate or unfair design decisions. Some AI platforms are even starting to show a cohesive design language in the images that are being generated. While robotics and artificial intelligence are advancing at a rapid rate, they are far from understanding the “human condition” so to speak. The technology develops with the data fed to them and human emotions and needs are a complex data feed.  

Design decisions often involve multiple factors, such as aesthetics, functionality, and usability- something an AI algorithm may struggle to comprehend as a single concept. If you were to bring in a design straight from Vizcom into Blender today, there would more than likely be a lot of dimensional and surfacing errors as well as some questionable proportions in relation to the targeted user. User testing, for example, is still something that has to be done in person. A designer can make an assumption based on a digital persona, but won’t be able to make a decision without having that targeted persona give their input and directly interact with the design.

Designers are constantly looking for ways to improve their workflow and design processes. With the advent of AI, they can now take advantage of its benefits to improve speed, efficiency, accuracy, and innovation in their work. However, like any new tool, AI has its pros and cons. At Hatch Duo we’ve been integrating specific AI tools, including ChatGPT, DALL E 2, VizCom, and Midjourney, into our workflow to explore how they can help designers enhance their work. 

One AI tool that has been gaining popularity across multiple industries is ChatGPT. As a language model trained by OpenAI, ChatGPT has the capability to generate text based on a given prompt. Here at Hatch Duo, we’ve been using ChatGPT to generate unique product descriptions, marketing copy, proposal drafts, prompts for other AI image generation platforms, and even revise articles of text to have a different format or tone, saving time and effort.  

An AI tool that designers can leverage is VizCom, an AI-powered design tool that can automatically generate visual designs based on user input. VizCom is the AI tool made by designers for designers, with sketching being at the heart of the program's image generation model. Designers can also input parameters like color, font, and layout, and VizCom will generate design options that fit those specifications. VizCom's strength lies in its ability to generate designs quickly and efficiently, freeing up designers' time for more creative and strategic aspects of the design process. 

We’ve also explored using Midjourney in our processes. Midjourney is an AI-powered platform that uses stable diffusion data to create personalized user experiences. Midjourney's strength lies in its ability to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, providing designers with valuable insights into user behavior. For instance, say you want to design shoes in the style of Nike, Midjourney would sample their database and stitch together a set of images for that exact description.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way we design products, services, and experiences. With AI, designers can automate repetitive tasks, generate designs faster, and improve the accuracy of design decisions. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and detect patterns that humans might overlook in a matter of seconds. This can help designers make more informed design decisions and avoid costly mistakes. It also frees up their time to focus on more creative and strategic aspects of the design process. AI can generate designs that are entirely new and unexpected. By using machine learning algorithms, designers can explore a broader range of possibilities and create designs that push the boundaries of traditional design.

There are, however, some limitations with these tools. ChatGPT's strength lies in its ability to generate text that is coherent, natural-sounding, and grammatically correct, making it an essential tool for content creation. If you don’t understand the language needed to communicate with AI platforms the results will feel generic and repetitive in the case of ChatGPT or you may end up with an image that was very far off from your initial idea in the case of VizCom and Midjourney. How many Linkedin posts have you read in the past week alone that sound suspiciously derivative of one and other, or may even be the exact same copy? How many times have you tried to type “green hair dryer by Revlon” in Midjourney and gotten a result that more resembled a green washing machine than a hair dryer or something equally absurd?

As we move towards a future powered by AI, the design industry will need to adapt and evolve alongside it. By embracing AI as a tool to enhance our creativity and design skills, we can focus on solving human-centric problems rather than being bogged down by repetitive tasks. It's an exciting time to be a design professional, and the possibilities presented by AI are endless. Let's explore this futuristic tool together and create a future that optimizes our thinking and solves human pain points.

Here at Hatch Duo, we've been incorporating AI into our design processes, and it's been an incredible asset for generating and expanding upon ideas as well as optimizing our design process as a whole. We invite you to explore our numerous AI tutorials and explorations on YouTube. We also have some exciting AI collaborations in progress, so stay tuned!