Over the past couple of years, the entire technology space has experienced an immense shift in its status-quo, all because of artificial intelligence — AI. ChatGPT being the frontier for this shift, was released on 30th November 2022 and had over a million users by December 4, 2022. By the next month, ChatGPT had grossed over 100 million users which made it the fastest-growing consumer application to date. This showed how quickly people jumped on the AI wagon and got up and running in no time.
The introduction of artificial intelligence hence brought about the inevitable conundrum of “Would Ai replace me in doing my job?” This was the question behind every creative’s mind while other users were simply blown away at how much of a super power they have at the tips of their fingers. With that in mind, quite a handful of creatives have come to embrace artificial intelligence and another handful feel a tad repulsed by it to say the least.
AI in the design process
Let’s dissect what AI is in the simplest of terms. Imagine you have a magic robot friend named BMO. You teach BMO all sorts of things by showing them pictures, written stories, and even video games. The more you teach BMO, the smarter they get! Artificial intelligence is kind of like BMO. It’s a special kind of computer program that learns from all the information it’s fed, just like you teach BMO. This information can be pictures, videos, sounds, even words and numbers. Hence, the more you interact with artificial intelligence, the more it learns and the smarter it gets. This means AI solely relies on human input to learn and understand things better which gives a whole new perspective to how we can see AI..
The AI + Design relationship is one where AI seems more than a tool for improving overall designs but a catalyst to the entire process of designing and even to an extent, development. This goes to say that by harnessing the super-charge that Ai provides, the end results are limitless and also painless. Here are a few ways Ai can be harnessed for a better design process
Pros of AI in the design process
- Inspiration and ideas: Every designer has experienced a form of ‘creative block’ It could be that they have run out of ideas for creating a logo, styling and structuring a layout for a landing page or simply not just having a jolt of inspiration, AI might just be the puzzle piece you need to make it all come together. With tools like Midjourney, you can produce visually stunning images based on textual prompts which may be perfect for sparking creative ideas or generating variations of existing designs.
- Time saving superpowers: Tired of resizing images or changing fonts dozens of times? I know I am. Tools like Adobe Sensei automate repetitive tasks like resizing images, adjusting colors, and suggesting fonts, making that aspect of designing a breeze and freeing up time to focus on other phases of the design process. WireGen, which is embedded into Figma as a plugin, also takes the creation of wireframes to a whole new level. It automates the process of creating wireframes simply from a text prompt and goes as far as generating a whole bunch of ideas of features for when the wireframes would be turned into a high-fidelity design. More like two birds and one stone.
- Data-driven design decisions: The super-charge of AI for designers is not only limited to the visual aspects of design. It can be exploited to create designs driven by real life data through the use of tools like ChatGPT. Being the powerhouse of most AI models, ChatGPT could be used to create actual feasible competitive analysis, user personas, journey maps and also a value proposition canvas. In the pre-AI years, these phases could take a while and even a new level of research, thus creating room for a reasonable margin of error. All a thing of the past, if AI is used right.
The super-charge of AI for designers is not only limited to the visual aspects of design. It can be exploited to create designs driven by real life data through the use of tools like ChatGPT.
Drawbacks of AI in the design process
On the other hand of the spectrum, there are also a couple of drawbacks which stand to be potential cons to using AIi as a designer:
- Lack of creativity and originality: Remember when we earlier mentioned that AI lives on the data that already exists provided by us? Well, this is a drawback because while AI can actively spark ideas, relying solely on them can lead to unified designs that lack what only humans are capable of — a human touch. Furthermore, designers may invariably rely on AI way too much that they begin to neglect their creative muscles and overall creative growth.
- Over-dependence on data: Imagine a community well that has three types of water in it. Whoever decides to take water out of that well has a chance of getting one of the three types of water there with no exception. The output obtained from AI is solely based on the input it has been trained with and that means that every output has been constrained to a certain extent. To further illustrate this, the current ChatGPT-4’s knowledge is static and cut off at a certain point, meaning it doesn’t have access to information or events that occurred after its last training data update in April 2023.
- Ethical considerations: Certain phases of design closely tie around psychology, and with psychology comes ethical considerations and usages of certain tools. The underlying inner workings of many AI algorithms are not entirely understandable. This raises a red flag about potential manipulation of user behavior through design. Hence, as designers, it is our responsibility to use AI ethically while still prioritizing overall user-wellbeing.
Key Takeaways
At this point, it would be safe to say that there are a couple of grey areas for the application of AI in design and that ties directly into how we as designers utilize these tools to our advantage. Ultimately, AI for now could not replace us designers but would most definitely replace designers who avoid AI altogether.
We at Inverse Studio see AI as a turbocharged engine to design. With the integration of AI into our everyday practices and tasks, we have been able to launch projects quite easily and effectively. Bear in mind, we do not just input prompts into an AI model and present the output as our results, but we carefully introduce AI into scenarios where it could give a potential helping hand and still include our own human results into them.
In retrospect, AI has come to stay and not just in the design fields. It has come to cut across various works of life from healthcare to finance and manufacturing, plus, looking into the nearest future, there would be more and more capacities for Ai to fill across every aspect of technology. With this in mind, it is about time we all embrace the perks while still keeping a second eye on the drawbacks that this unique ‘super power’ introduces.
