Anupam Tomer, Associate Professor, School of Design Pearl Academy, Bengaluru

Anupam Tomer specializes in Automotive/Consumer Product design. He is a graduate from Coventry University and Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, UK. His span of 12 years of industry experience covers Product design & Strategy-led projects for companies & consulting firms such as Maruti Suzuki, Firefox Bikes (Hero), Desmania, Jaguar LandRover, Bajaj, Singer, Barista Lavazza, Microsoft to name a few. His passion for design practice finds its expression in Visual Arts, Provocations, Systems thinking, and Speculative Futures. He is also an avid endurance cyclist and fitness biohacker.

 

In recent times, AI & Machine learning has transformed into the ‘go-to’ domain for aspirants in the field of service design, e-commerce, cyber security, banking, automation, and social media. With the field of Design diversifying at a much faster pace, the areas of applications at present, go beyond chatbots, search engine optimization (SEO), automation in transport design, and credit card fraud protection.

This field has started to boost creative curiosities amongst many design-led consulting firms, with AI finding its stronghold in how to creatively interface with the latest implementable technologies for designers. Hence, it is indeed an exciting time for creative creators, to explore this diversified field of design, as many of these tools are open-source, and are readily available for future consumers.

Additionally, Machine learning is not limited to only data visualization and management as toolsets but is more established with its inter-connectedness to various disciplines of Art, Design & Entertainment. It allows creatives to make their product experiences highly sensorial and responsive and help them solve the daily market problems in the most delightful of ways.

So, what does AI mean for designers?

AI & Machine learning tools help designers imagine, build, test, and create solutions. By generating an array of divergent ideas, this field helps augment new prototypes, troubleshoot pain points within a customer journey, and recognize the inter-connectedness of complex system models. These are just a few areas of increasing implementation of AI tools in the creative space.

The limits, however, are unimaginable as the final frontiers look towards space exploration systems design & vehicles, Mars architectural design blueprints, and integrated nano biotech medicines, thereby testing the extremes of human brain potential.

AI as the new human tech

AI tools continue to evolve, as per past data sets and emerging patterns. It is continuously creating a creative consciousness that will fuel true human expectations for future lifestyles.

The experiential rooting of AI tech into our daily lives will power the most iconic product designs for the upcoming generations. It will influence designers to create products that will have the capability of self-repairing, self-adapting, and self-correcting in accordance with situations, environment, and user type. They will no longer need instructions but will instead simulate the innate human behavior of becoming lifelong learners and continue to grow, evolve and resolve accordingly. Products of the future, therefore, will be more humane and compassionate in many respects.

The upcoming AI-enabled product designs will have the capability of human perception that will unlock greater immersive experiences, as the AI continues to learn from its observational integrated technologies. Designers are, at present, developing products that can memorize tasks sequences, anticipate your next steps, forecast outcomes, and even guide you towards completing your daily complex tasks.

AI reimagining the way we task, learn and travel

Imagine a traditional musical instrument that is AI enabled and is supposed to teach you how to play it like a pro in a matter of few days. Or what if your smart cooking utensils understood your mother’s secret of cooking your favourite dish and goes ahead to teach you how to cook it just like her?

Can you imagine your vanity mirror guiding you to a new trendy look every day? Or the city architecture exteriors enabled with a guidance system, without the need of sign boards and that GPS on your phone! Wouldn’t it be great if your photographs could also carry the memories of how you felt  in that moment which then someday can be experienced by your dear ones as well?

There is no denying the fact that the future of AI is expected to dominate our lives in many ways unexpected.

AI for Design

On the more technical and process-oriented front, AI will assist design in its pre-production and post-production processes that require a deeper involvement of planned strategies, to achieve a certain creative output.

For product designers, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) and engineering dynamics will be powered by real-time computational engagement and corrections. Additionally, Generative design is already being applied to visual arts, architecture, and product components in order to explore form proportions and textural detailing like never before.

However, there will also exist AI intervention in forming analytics on design surveys, to build more agile business models and project cost estimates in progress. Therefore, designers across the globe will be able to create a wholesomely positive impact on the quality of design and achieve seamless integration into daily objects eventually.

Our world of remote digital collaboration is now being completely reimagined. With the advent of open-source applications like Ego4D and the introduction of platforms like Metauniverse, Autodesk dreamcatcher, and Unreal, the gradual transition into AI-assisted design world has already begun.

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