AI’s Emerging Role in Design and the Creative Process
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Drew Bamford
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Artificial intelligence in design is no longer a future fantasy—it’s a present reality. We already see real use cases where AI meaningfully extends a designer’s capabilities. It acts as a force multiplier, enabling individuals and teams to generate ideas, iterate faster, and explore directions that might not have otherwise surfaced.
One of the clearest early wins is in concept generation. Tools powered by generative AI can quickly produce mood boards and product concept renderings. It’s like having a team of digital interns ready to create visual alternatives immediately. This doesn’t just speed up workflows—it expands the scope of creative exploration, which leads directly to higher quality solutions down the road. And on the textual side, AI can now simulate something as fundamental as brainstorming. When I started in design in the '90s, it took eight people in a room for an hour to generate a wide set of ideas. Now, an AI collaborator can do that in seconds.
That’s where AI excels in the design process: during the divergent phase, where the goal is quantity and variety. Accuracy at this stage isn’t critical. After all, even human-generated ideas in a brainstorm are often messy, incomplete, or unviable. It’s in theconvergence phase—where concepts are refined and validated—that human judgment becomes essential. AI can suggest, but it’s up to us to select.
"AI acts as a force multiplier, enabling individuals and teams to generate ideas, iterate faster, and explore directions that might not have otherwise surfaced."
Speed, in this context, isn’t about cutting corners—it’s about enabling more iterations. The design process has always been iterative; the more loops, the better the results. AI speeds up each phase, allowing for more cycles without expanding timelines. But with that speed comes risk. Shortcuts, if taken blindly, can amplify mistakes. Trusting AI output requires vigilance. Just as we verify the work of a new human colleague, we must vet the results AI gives us—at least for now. Trust is earned over time.
Beyond acceleration, AI also offers a path to greater personalization. By reducing the cost and complexity of the design process, it becomes feasible to create niche or even individualized products. Imagine designing a product not for a mass market, but for a market of one. That shift could dramatically improve how well products serve their users.
This opens up a larger, more philosophical question: do we want more products, or just better ones? AI has the potential to unleash a flood of new things, but it also risks contributing to overconsumption. We must embed the right values into the tools we build.
But whose values? These tools are being developed around the world, with differing cultural norms and priorities. There will never be a single, universal moral framework encoded into AI.
"Trusting AI output requires vigilance. Just as we verify the work of a new human colleague, we must vet the results AI gives us—at least for now. Trust is earned over time."
Still, there’s an inspiring opportunity here: democratization. Just as the early web allowed individuals to become publishers, AI could make it possible for anyone to become a product designer. Pair that with rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing, and suddenly small businesses—or even individuals—can create meaningful products that corporations might overlook. That kind of empowerment could reshape the creative economy.
AI isn't the first tech transformation I’ve seen in my decades in design. I learned to draft by hand with a pencil. Then came CAD, which allowed for organic forms we couldn’t previously imagine—some brilliant, others merely novel. With AI, we’re likely to go through a similar period of exploration and excess before the tools are correctly integrated into practice. The long-term success of AI in design will hinge on how well we use it to augment our human strengths, rather than simply react to its capabilities.
AI might feel different because it’s intelligent, or at least simulates intelligence. It doesn’t rely solely on the designer’s mind—it brings its own “ideas” to the table. That’s a new paradigm. But we should remember that it’s still a tool. And like all tools, its value depends on the hands and minds that wield it.
If I could be king for a day and build something with AI? I’d make a creation system for children—something that fuses AI with 3D printing and makes it simple for a four-year-old to design and produce their own toys. Right now, my kids download characters from Pokémon or Frozen and print them out on a Bambu Lab printer. But what if they could tell a story and have the AI generate the model, ready to print? That kind of tool would empower creativity in a whole new generation. And that, to me, is the real promise of AI—not just faster design, but more inclusive and imaginative creation.
Drew Bamford
Citizen Designer, Studio Bamford, and Former VP HTC
