Nowadays, technology has transformed our daily lives in ways we could never have imagined. Digital corporations are developing new technologies such as machine learning, virtual reality, and a lot of others. The sciences that have an unknown-unknown feature can’t resist the transition to a known-unknown position, merely waiting for a time as a human to make it to known-known sciences.

Human development has been made, but the public has imagined the worst consequences of this progress, believing that automation would be used everywhere and AI will replace human positions. No exception in the design area, as seen by the reaction when GPT-3 the machine learning capabilities that can convert text to picture, something that used to take a long time to understand, but now AI can develop it in a short time.

Does this mean that artificial intelligence will eventually replace designers and fundamentally change the way we design?

The Design Process Today

A design innovation process is one that begins with the concrete condition of a challenge and progresses to the abstract condition of an idea, which is then turned into a tangible product or service solution. And the process is non-linear, with an iterative journey.

• Observe from real-world situations; Whereas the process of the activity is motivated by empathy for the users, we also aim to understand from the users’ point of view. Purpose to obtain the most important insight, then identify interesting insights by studying people’s behavior.
• Create a new frame; Recognize patterns, discover themes, and find significance in all we’ve seen, collected, and observed. We go from specific observations and individual tales to more abstract truths that apply to large groups of people.
• Explore new concepts in the abstract; Design is an abductive activity, so we may think of it as being creative and utilizing our imagination to create something new. To create a new concept, we must think abstractly and use our abductive capacity to imagine a solution that does not exist today.
• Implement them in the real world and iterate it; Design is an iterative process in which we continually improve via rapid testing cycles. Investigate how our ideas could develop in the actual world and improve them to make them better.

With the complexity of the design concept, it is not enough for the designer to depend on imagination, creativity, or transforming anything from the brief to be an image for creating a good design solution. It requires a variety of abilities, such as the capacity to learn from others, develop and craft intentionally, and communicate meaningfully. We will go through the main advantages of humans and AI one by one in order to get an idea of who will take the lead on the design process while also developing a solution to the problems.

Human Advantages

Humans are one-of-a-kind individuals with unique abilities to;

• Empathize each other, Human decision-making is characterized by an embracing of emotion. It frees us from the constraints of our particular experiences and allows us to go beyond the boundaries of our own stories.
• Framing a problem, Humans can adapt by depending on our cognitive abilities to build mental models by better imagining outcomes and selecting alternatives. Humans use framing to capture the essence of reality through mental models in order to create the best plan.
• Counterfactual thinking, We are able to make sense of the world by picturing what may happen and imagining facts that we don’t have.

AI Advantages

While AI is a program created by humans, it uses an algorithm form of instruction to react and output under the conditions that have been previously defined.

• AI has infinite resources, as well as greater speed and capability as compared to humans for data analytics and faster iteration to complete a repetitive operation.
• While humans assist AI in the process of learning by generating an algorithm and training it to produce an anticipated result, there are three types of learning that enable AI to learn on their own: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning which enables AI to learn its own. AI will continue to evolve by finding patterns in data at a faster, larger, and more accurate scale.

We can see that both humans and AI have benefits. Humans benefited from the capacity to sympathize with one another, framing the situation based on their mental model, as well as the ability to imagine what could be or engage in counterfactual reasoning. While AI has an advantage in how it can analyze gigabytes of data quickly and repeatedly. Humans seem unable to develop these powers.

Humans and AI’s Opportunity in the Process of Design

In this case, we can split the design process into two chunks;

1. A Human-Intense Design Phase in which humans will be strong in the abstract phase, outlining a problem and then thinking abductively to enhance their imagination and creativity in producing a new idea.
2. The AI-powered phase will be on the concrete phase, which will need the ability to discover patterns quickly and repetitively in order to improve human-designed concepts.

Instead of replacing humans in the design process, we may have a powerful collaboration with AI to level up our design. AI can improve our analytics and decision-making skills, as well as increase our creativity.

The Creative Collaboration

As we can see from the benefits of these two subjects, let us attempt to envision how they may affect our design process.

• Observe from real world situation; During this process, humans may utilize human empathy to dive deeper into the situation and get an understanding of the users. However, with the assistance of AI, it can instantly evaluate gigabytes of data as a source of quantitative insight. AI can accurately recognize patterns (using an unsupervised learning or reinforcement learning technique), and it can be fueled with real-time data from customer interactions. AI engines integrate learning capabilities, and the algorithm improves its predictions about the user’s wants and behavior. This kind of knowledge may assist designers in categorizing users depending on their activity.
• Create a new frame; We shall get the pattern from the issue through the analytic procedure. Creating a new frame will have an influence on how we see the issue, how we desire to solve it, and how we express our thoughts. Framing allows us to imagine what isn’t there, but our mental models may fill in the blanks. It is a process that leads the human mind toward understanding, creativity, and the assessment of possibilities that machines cannot emulate.
• Explore new concepts in abstract; Concept exploration is a process in which we have specified our framework and prepared to think abductively. With AI’s output to rapidly identify users, we have the opportunity to level up our design to become extremely people-centered, the design for every single user. This opportunity allows us to provide a unique experience for each user. This model will transform the system into a modular one, with designers focusing on designing each user’s classification. However, establishing this people-centricity is incredibly difficult. Airbnb defines their complicated environment in terms of cultures, ages, backgrounds, and travel purposes in order to operate its AI factory.
• Implement them in the real world and iterate it; Humans have a limited ability to learn quickly in design practices. However, with AI’s automated capacity, designers can do what they did before in a faster method. AI’s Iteration will be enabled by modular design, which is based on standardizations and classifications of all design components that designers have already produced. They allow designers to transfer the specification of particular design decisions to algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence allows for the removal of scope limits, allowing for more radical design experimentation beyond our imagination.

Conclusion

So, does all this indicate that AI will replace designers to generating automated designs and producing ideas for users?

The design principles that have been defined today; people-centered, abductive, and iterative, don’t really change much. Rather, we elevated the design to become extremely people-centered, with multiple user categories, and continuously enhanced the solutions over time.

Although digital technologies have attempted to reduce the costs and time associated with producing and delivering goods and services, design is still primarily a human-intensive activity. As complicated creatures, humans must fulfill a variety of qualities. AI allows us to eliminate scope constraints, allowing for more rapid radical discovery. However, humans will take the lead in this process, producing logic and thinking about linear design strategy. This change in focus requires new ideas and pushes design closer to leadership, both of which are difficult for AI to replace.

Reference

Cukier, K., Mayer-Schonberger, V., Vericourt, F. D. (2021). Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil. Dutton.

Kelley, T., Kelley, D. (2013). Creative Confidence Unleashing the Creative Potential Within us All. Crown Business.

Kumar, V. (2012). 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization. Willey.

Verganti, R., Vendraminelli, L., Iansiti, M. (2020). Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business School.