Most of my ideation "sketches" just flow through my mind--little maquettes dancing with flashes of imagery. Requiring a specific number of ideation sketches, never lifting your pen, working with two colors—these are all fine to the extent they are useful.* However, design educators should not be pedantic about these things.
In a few minutes I littered the blog above and below with ideation sketches using DALL-E 2. This will only get easier and “better” with time. These sketches of toasters, helmets, blenders, coffee makers, and door handles may not be to your liking, but I generated all of them in less than ten minutes of typing. They are done in marker, colored pencil, and graphite. Easy stuff.
Interesting issues arise for the designer/educator/student to consider in the AI universe. One of them is personal style. While our personal style seems independent of AI’s ability to identify patterns that nurture rule creation, it is influenced by the world we encounter, much of which will be increasingly generated by AI or flattened by the globalization of cultural standards.
Unlike AI, people have the ability to 1) change their style and 2) incorporate influences serendipitously. The randomness and mistakes people make do not rest in the datasets that machine learning requires. Moreover, people respond and appreciate the sacrificial time expended by other people. People hold hands and converse. AI can converse, but it doesn’t sacrifice its time in the process.
What is personal style and how much of it is simply a product of cultural imputation and the copying of influencers? Do we own our own sense of style? These are unanswerable questions; however, people can take surprising actions that upset rule-based approaches. People have the ability to shed rules and explore new ways of thinking and acting. Additionally, people can be exposed to events that modifies their personal style. This serendipitous stumbling can lead to a surprising randomness in style.
I do take joy knowing that imagination is greater than knowledge, imagination is an untethered rocket and a sweeping cool wind that carries thoughts wherever it will! Maybe my technology-enabled works are only decorative, but I own them. They are my voice. Being able to present my voice is all I can ask. I can’t ask for fame or money, no one owes me that.
In this next chapter of design, the dogma should continue to crumble and distinctive human abilities should shine brighter while we swim in what AI is flooding at our feet.
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the Cradle of all true art and science. Key to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer Wonder at stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. Albert Einstein 1930
* I like tradition. My students and I have crawled into a dark room under one of our campus buildings to do blind contour drawings. Weird and intriguing, but I really don't know how useful it is for the aspiring designer.
More ideation sketches! How many do you want? I have a few more minutes.
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