Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Digital technology has fundamentally changed the creative workflows in the design industry in the past two decades. The rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI) is now leading the revolution into the next phase, and it has begun to impact the design industry and redefine the role of the designer. In 2017, Alibaba’s AI system, LuGan, “designed” more than 1.7 billion customized banner ads for Singles Day, one of the most important retail holidays in China. The machine learning system created by Alibaba AI Lab enabled LuGan to create 8,000 unique banner layouts in one second. These banner ads look identical to what graphic designers would do and effectively generated $25.3 billion dollars of sales on Singles Day for Alibaba. Similarly, Nutella utilized a generative design algorithm to create 7 million one-of-a-kind labels last year. It is becoming clear that, in the age of AI and generative design process, the role of a designer has to change. We must begin to take concrete steps toward transforming design from a service industry to an idea industry. Moreover, in order for the design to stay relevant, it has to be as close to the edge where technology meets society as possible. This paper discusses the three pronged pedagogy from newly developed Creative Technology and Design subject area at FIT. Learn strategies, case studies, and teaching methodologies from the examples of kinetic typography, product design, user experience design, online reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) projects.