Generative Ai for CAD

Feeling: Inspired. This past Tuesday I attended a Next-Gen Ai Design Techniques seminar facilitated by Dorian Gorski with leading Ai design guru Greg Aper It has really had my head spinning this week. I would like to comment directly what I took away from the seminar soon. Though I couldn't help putting a couple of my "future of Ai" ideas down in Figma. I expect to see more robust integration of Ai in the designer's work flow, so I took a stab at visualizing what could (and likely will) be.

Generative Ai for CAD is in its infancy, but soon I imagine the ability to generate parametric geometry from imagery and materials databases from text/image prompts. Google’s DreamFusion, Nvidia’s Get3D, and OpenAI’s Point-E do some of this now, and Vizcom's Sketch to 3D is coming soon, but we haven't seen an integrated tool that builds editable parametric, uv mappable geometry. I don't think we will have to wait very long though.

The tools don't even need to be native to a certain CAD or rendering platform. The below could be standalone generators that output our preferred files types. Imagine being able to snap a picture of an object with your phone and have a simplified object generated that you can modify and add to an assembly. Then when it is time to explore colorways and visualize, find real-world material samples to prompt the creation of digital materials that can be tweaked to your needs. What else would be a good use of Ai in design that would save time, yet leave the creative keys in the hands of the designer?

Musings on the Future of Design & AI

I have been stewing on a few thoughts about my use of various AI tools in my process and indirectly the wider adoption across the design industry as a whole. And while the most poignant detractors are beginning to speak more loudly and articulately concerning the value of the tools and those who adopt them. It seems we are in the midst of a continuous inflection point that will end when we are able to accept, learn, and grow with the tools, because they are not going away. Here are my three main avenues of thought that I would like to share. I offer them as aspects of the conversation that I am either concerned about or interested in.

Where credit is due

Probably the biggest elephant in the room, for me, is the notion that not all users of AI tools have good intentions. That my attempts to put those tools to work for me, my clients, and ultimately to the benefit of end-users is done with transparency and honesty is something I pride myself on. Whether I find myself inspired by biomimicry and natural structures, a particular material or finish trend, or from an AI-generated set of outputs assembled from my own ideas, a critical part of my story telling is the journey of how I got to my result.

Possible inspiration sources

It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that pressures to shortcut the design process to get to a result faster (and cheaper) is very tempting, and to many there lacks an immediate cost in doing so. I worry about that. Not too long ago I built myself a Midjourney style tuner using the terms “H.R. Giger” and “Zaha Hadid” in the prompting. It was an experiment for myself and not for paid work, but as I did so I felt a bit icky - and not because of the creepy imagery that prompt generated. The moment I set Midjourney on that path, I realized how easily ill-intentioned users could “rip-off” others’ work with incredible ease. I decided to dig further and extrapolate what it was about those prompts that I wanted to investigate, going a bit further than asking Midjourney to reference the acclaimed work of others. I felt more content with this as a path, but in my head I knew what had inspired me.

Not exactly what I was looking for anyways.

So here’s the question for discussion. How should designers give credit where credit is due? I am of the opinion that we most definitely must report when any prompt has contains a named reference or artifact in the case of an image prompt. Beyond that, are we satisfied with telling the story of what inspired us even if not named explicitly in a prompt? What if ChatGPT is asked to describe a Zaha Hadid building and those results are used instead? What then?

Human Element

Looking at the present state of generative AI tools and the near to mid term future of their use in the designer’s tool kit, I tend to think even further out to the future impact of our collective anthropology. Beyond the historical backdrop of wars, cultural upheaval, news cycles and content strategies motivated by clicks and advertising dollars, etc., what will we make of our current cultural contribution as a society and what we value as evidenced by our artifacts? I am concerned that handing the keys of people-centered design to AI would lack a large degree of wisdom and dilute what we - the creatives solving for nascent human needs with empathy and understanding - are driven to our creative fields to do: Design for meaning.

Even the machines can't process this future.

I think about Edward Tufte’s book Beautiful Evidence and try to work out what evidence might be inscribed in the design of an object or experience that a human had a hand in the process that drove its creation. If mastering design is akin to defining it’s form, materials, expression, usability, color, attitude, relevance, manufacturability, and sustainability, surely meaning is just as important. So here is the next question: how do we ensure that we retain a “designed for humans, by humans” both in process and in the produced product? Do we expect that AI will begin to know us better than we know ourselves and let it do all of that “heavy lifting”? What do we want the future to know about us and what we valued when looking at what we produced?

Creativity is King

While not as ethically concerning as the above, the value of creativity is no less important as we adapt to the reality of AI-powered tools near ubiquity (and continuous improvement). I had a conversation a few month’s back with a colleague about the use of generative AI in the design process and how the tools really struggle with new-to-world innovations. The example I use is the imagining the iPhone in a world where such a thing doesn’t exist - or any such product improvement that substantially differs from the accepted and familiar configuration, form or manner of operation. I have touched on ways to trick Midjourney through workshopping a prompt with analogies and metaphor in a prior post. This isn’t always easily done and, at the time of this writing, is still more effectively done by hand without an AI assist.

Same Prompt for both. Who did it better?

The missing ingredient is the human creativity that a good designer possesses. That is more valuable than ever right now. There is no AI tool that can currently replace a designer’s lived experience, observation of the world and people around them, and the talent for connecting the pieces in new and interesting ways that weren’t previously explored. My old boss, Daniel Streng, instilled this value in me long ago:

Never let the shortcomings of the tools compromise the design.

So what value then are generative AI tools to such a talented visionary of a designer? My primary uses of generative AI include two main activities. First, I use the tools for various thought experiments that inform my early ideation work. For example the Hadid-Giger mashup I described earlier. With traditional design tools, there is no way to efficiently do that without feeling like you are going down a time-wasting rabbit hole. Generative AI gives me the ability to let a muse play out and decide if it is worth exploring further or not. Second, I use AI to speed up post-production of rendered imagery. Touching up renders used to take a lot of time and still does, but now I can explore a broader palette of settings, lighting and context that I didn’t have time for before. AI adds value in these contexts with out stepping on the human component.

My final thought is that perhaps it would be of value to begin developing a set AI design heuristics that would allow designers to extract value from the tools and do so responsibly. Just as usability and interaction design do. Is this a possible starting point? Please let me know your thoughts.

Optimizing the AI Ideation Process

Sharing my experiences with AI tools in practice after a year of working as an independent designer has been enlightening. While I've encountered some limitations in integrating these tools into my process, I've also made significant progress.

For those beginning to fold AI into their workflow, I've put together some tips that provide a solid foundation for organizing one's approach. Although some points may seem remedial, they're essential for beginners.

As a designer of more than 20 years, with 15 years of experience designing home appliances, I evaluated the technical feasibility of AI-generated output using a simple product - the toaster oven. It's a product I use almost every day, from air-frying to reheating pizza to toasting bagels.

Correction time! I need to rectify a mistake I made in the AI Ideation slides I shared last week. I learned that Midjourney uses a latent diffusion model, not generative adversarial networks. I didn't think the distinction mattered for industrial design ideation, but it turns out it does! I have added some additional slides to reflect on what I have learned. Also, let's connect and keep the engaging conversations going.

What is Design Leadership?

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a Design Leader in the context of today and the state of design in our world, our markets, and our lives. As a result of my ongoing job search, I began looking into how I might become a more effective leader and how one attempts to do that. Where does a designer begin? I had a loose collection of thoughts, but what I uncovered put into perspective what I had inadvertently been leaving out of my professional narrative. Today I want to speak to the design leadership journey I took myself on, what I learned, and humbly ask for opinions, feedback, and personal insights.

Context: My Job Search

Over the last few months I have been on a job search journey that was both unexpected, but at the same time somewhat welcomed. At this point in my design career I had been mulling the idea of making a change that would better align with my personal and professional growth goals. There was some sort of design itch that I had been trying to ignore while focusing on my work and my family and the enjoyment of life itself. Being recently laid off as part of a workforce reduction, my immediate reaction was dismay. I had grown over the years with my fellow designers and I would miss them and the achievements we had accomplished together. I also felt freedom to begin the journey of searching for the right role – even if I did not know yet exactly what that was.

One thing that I was well aware of in the beginning is that the further up one grows in level and experience, the fewer and fewer positions are available. Due, in many cases, to high demand and low supply. This is true for Design and most functional roles in established organizations. Instead senior talent will often forge out on their own, start their own businesses, private practices, or change careers altogether. I have been a designer since I was 8 years old – I’ve been drawing race cars, airplanes, and cityscapes since the 3rd grade and even won awards at an early age. I simply have no interest in letting a context that includes competition for fewer roles force me out of who I inherently am.

However, the feedback I have been receiving during my job search has not been entirely helpful. There are three types of feedback I have received in response to the roles that I nearly landed. First, there has been honest feedback which I am very appreciative of and have taken to heart. Second, there have been cases of absolutely no feedback. Those are especially tough moments, when after multiple rounds of interviews, in person and over video conferences, time spent engaging and establishing a positive report, that a Workday automated script sends me an emotionless email notification that I am no longer a candidate. Then there is the last, most frustrating type of feedback: the blow off. This is the type of feedback that is so obviously created out of a duty to send something rather than provide anything meaningful. The most absurd blow off feedback I received to date was for a role requiring 2 years minimum management experience. The feedback, conveyed through a recruiter, was “We are looking for someone with more management experience.” I won’t recite my experience credentials, but one glance at my resume would indicate I have plenty. I would almost prefer no feedback than receive something as valueless as this. 

But it got me thinking…

A Design Problem

What If I take this feedback seriously? What if I treat the non-feedback as some indicator that I didn’t effectively communicate my leadership skills and experience? This was the real impetus for this design leadership journey and the driving question behind treating it as a design problem. At the beginning of any design problem, I began by articulating for myself what I believe to be true today. I had been using four primary categories as a structure for how I speak to questions of design leadership in my job applications, on my resume, and during interviews. They are Empathy, Communication, Vision, and Mentorship. I used these categories more so as a way to organize my thoughts rather than as a meaningful framework to approaching design leadership. (I often would relate specific examples or scenarios that fell into these four areas.) So it is at this point I had a context for what I needed to go out and discover. Was there anything that my four loose buckets couldn’t account for? What would need to change for me to adapt to what I discover?

The next step was to go out and learn. I took a look back at what experiences, conversations and advice I had received from various peers and mentors over the years had formed my basic philosophy in order to understand the trajectory of my thinking. I also spent time reading articles on the topic of design leadership and even examined a few design leadership course syllabi I found published around the web. It wasn’t long before I had collected several dozen traits that describe attributes of Design Leadership. There are a lot of opinions to be gathered, but I was looking to find patterns from sources that I had come to respect including IDEO U, Medium, Fast Company, Abstract and others. I took note of where perspectives reinforced each other and where they diverged. 

Then I began the process of sorting through the information collected, looking for major themes. Using a rudimentary card sorting exercise I was able to uncover that the traits can be roughly divided into two categories: those that are intrinsic and those that are instrumental. Intrinsic traits are those that are valuable on their own in the context of Design Leadership, and instrumental traits are those that are valuable in relation to the intrinsic or other traits. For example, being able to provide actionable feedback is instrumentally valuable to an honest and candid leader which are more intrinsically valuable traits on their own.

What I Learned

Eventually I was able to line up a lot of what I had learned with my original four categories, which was reassuring. In addition, I did learn a few things that I had not anticipated. Three things that I had not considered was 1) being able to speak to being a practitioner-leader, 2) how I lead myself in order to lead others, and 3) how I convey my creative philosophy.

First, a lot of what I had read underscored the value of being a design practitioner as well as a design leader. Often this type of role is termed a “contributing manager”. In my time as a designer, I have never worked under a design leader who was not in some way a contributor or executing some aspect of their design practice. Designers are inherently a hands-on group of people, so it stands to reason. Though, I had read a post recently from someone writing about how they didn’t want a design leadership role because they believed that somehow they would have to give up the act of designing in order to do so. What I learned reinforced the ideas of leading though example, setting the bar of work ethic, establishes a gold standard for the team.

Second, something that I had not thought about, but is very important for a design leader, is the idea of "leading self". This is something that I had thought is maybe a bit introspective or not something to consider as a quality to speak at great length to. However, I have now come to understand how important it is to qualify how I have allowed myself to be open-minded, my willingness to fail, my acceptance of feedback, the ongoing enrichment of my viewpoint, etc., all as a part of being a better designer and design leader.

Last, and this was the big “ah-ha” for me, is the importance of Creativity (duh!) as a key attribute of Design Leadership. In that moment I realized that I had not been addressing, through any of my design leadership job searching activities, the critical component of how to lead and manage a creative function. I had been treating creativity as something that potential employers and hiring managers would likely take as granted, simply because I have extensive experience listed on my resume and in my portfolio. What I had been leaving out is how I speak to creativity and my philosophy and actions of being a creative leader. And it is such an immensely important aspect for a hiring audience to hear! Creativity is not only fundamentally important to design leadership, but is also connected to leading of self, leading others and creative collaboration. Inspiring your team, expanding the comfort zone during ideation, and partnering with cross-functionals to embrace forward thinking are just a few of actions a design leader should be speaking to when prompted to “Tell us about what makes you a good creative leader.”

What Does it Mean?

At the end of this thought exercise, I have come to understand a few things that I had been leaving out of my professional narrative as a designer searching for a leadership role. I now know that I have something to improve on in the future, and that’s great. I have also rearranged a bunch of words in Figma as a part of that process, but I don’t think that collection of words alone merits much beyond its usefulness to the exercise. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a process nerd and collector of design-related frameworks. I have quite a collection and use them to inspire myself and others to think around big design problems.

I would like to take this thinking forward and build something of value for the design community, but I’m not quite there yet. In my opinion, a good framework needs to check two boxes to have any value: It needs to be interesting and it needs to be useful. Below I have created a very rough draft of where my brain is heading. It definitely needs work. I may even scrap it and start over and continue iterating.

I would really like to hear what the design community thinks – about the exercise and the potential framework. Am I missing anything incredibly obvious or not so obvious? Is my thinking grossly incompatible with your perspective and experiences? Please share! I’m on a journey and I am genuinely hungry to build on this. Thanks for reading. -TR

Grasshopper Structural Mastery Course Review

Last week I completed a structural design course presented by Nolan Kim and LeManoosh titled GRASSHOPPER STRUCTURAL MASTERY. Covered in the course are the fundamentals of applying the three main methods of creating the lightweight structures often seen in additive manufacturing. An example, included in the course, is the sort of footwear manufacturing the likes of which Nike has been employing as early as 2013. 

Structure design exercises created during the course.

The software required is Grasshopper 3D which now ships with the latest versions of Rhinoceros 3D. I’ve been using Rhino since 2002 and have been trying to get a grip on Grasshopper since its early days as a plugin. For those unfamiliar, Grasshopper uses a form of visual programming to create geometry in Rhino. Users move and connect nodes of various functions to create code that defines what is created and computes the solutions in real time. This is why the methodology is often referred to as computational modeling. There are other tools available for computational modeling, and Nolan mentions them in the course, but this course is focussed on the Rhino/Grasshopper pairing. 

Before kicking off a full review of the course, I want to mention two more things of note. First, modeling using Grasshopper is likely to be easier for those who have a background in math, especially geometry defining subjects. Those who don’t can still succeed, but it was satisfying to tickle that side of my brain and helped me anticipate a path forward in solving some of the tasks outlined in the course. Second, not every designer has access to or works in an environment that supports additive manufacturing, but that doesn’t preclude them from benefiting from this course. There are plugins for Grasshopper that allow building of structures more in line with traditional manufacturing processes. This course builds a foundation to carry into exploring more of what Rhino can do. Without further delay, here is my review of my experience taking the course.

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From left to right: Voronoi structure, TPMS structure, Beam structure

I would like to begin to say that Nolan Kim is a top notch instructor. I didn’t look extensively into his background, but I assume that this isn’t his first time teaching. His calm presentation and course structure are well crafted and suitable to those eager to learn. He has a slightly monotone delivery and that is about the only negative thing I can say. It is clear that he is very knowledgeable and is serious in his delivery. While he makes little use of levity or metaphor in his presentation, I did find his calmness as rational and approachable. In fact, he encourages those with issues to reach out and ask for help, which I did and we were able to work out a surface creation issue I was having together. Thanks again Nolan! I also enjoyed watching him problem solving his functions on the fly during the course, because that is a big part of working in Grasshopper. Even someone with his experience needs to go back and check that his nodes are correctly linked up.

Beam Structure midsole employing pulled points and matching outer cage

The content, laid out on the splash page, provides a clear path for what you will end up building and the learning steps required to get there. He starts with the main structural design principles with simple geometric examples (cubes and spheres) and when the principles are mastered, more complex real-world exercises allow you to build on those fundamentals and apply them to relevant products. The only struggle for some was the initial install of plugins needed to create the functions. Nolan had attempted to package up his plugin files, but it seems that some need to be directly downloaded from their creators’ sites. After a few minor hiccups and restarts the lessons begin. It is pretty smooth sailing to get through the creation of your first and subsequent tasks. I often paused the video alt-tabbed over to grasshopper to repeat what he had in his file, so the videos end up taking about twice as long as their runtime if you work alongside Nolan. I did side-track myself at one point because I wanted to try something I had learned in a later video on something from an earlier one. The video lesson format allows for learning at your own pace or fiddling around a bit if you want to do some unguided exploration.

What is covered by the course should not be taken as all Grasshopper or structural design has to offer. In fact there is a huge community of developers building plugins and if you know C# you can build your own component modules. Something that has come up a lot in my professional work are explorations of pattern and texture. I wish Nolan had gone into a bit of detail on what is possible beyond what was covered to give a better sense of what can be done with this toolset. Another thing I feel was somewhat missing is a workflow that supports work environments based on a large population of Creo and Windchill users. In other words, how does one get from static meshes into the engineering database (file formats in particular) because there is no way a Creo user is going to attempt to rebuild these things natively. And last thought, on the front end, how does one navigate from an early sketch to first model? It would be great to have a  simple flow chart that points users how to start building depending on what is desired. This may come more effortlessly with practice, but the novice will still feel a bit lost unless what is desired was covered in this course.

That’s my two-cents. All in all it was a pretty fun and engaging course. Superior to the plethora of youtube tutorials out there that lack the depth of why things should be built in certain ways. Clear presentation, structure and feedback loop. I’d say it was a little pricey for an introductory course, but maybe he’ll add a second, more advanced course and be able to drop the price a little. Maybe even apply some of my thoughts. Cheers and have fun building!

-TR

What the Heck is a Brand Experience Designer?

I have been asked numerous times during my current job search to explain in detail what my role at GE Appliances was, what my daily work day looked like and what my key performance indicators would have been. I thought that this would be a great topic for my first blog post. So here it is! I will describe, generally, what the role might entail in any organization and also provide some examples from my experiences along the way.

I had never heard the title brand experience designer prior to my role at GE Appliances. I have to admit that the combination did sound contrived at first, but I learned pretty quickly how big of a role it was. There are likely similar roles at many other companies that have different titles—Brand Director perhaps, if leaning more toward a marketing function; or Brand Visual Designer more toward UX—yet the common through line for these roles is brand and people.

The competencies one should expect to have master of include Empathy for your target user base, visual and verbal Communication, specifying Consistency in brand design language across al touch points, and of course, the Design of products whether they are goods and services. That last competency will likely differ business to business.

At a granular level, my daily work might look different than what, say, a health industry service designer might experience. I would expect that on some level, there is a lot that might translate. Here’s what I was looking at with regard to my competencies and utilization.

1. Empathy - Speaking directly to end users of the products and witnessing their experiences directly through research and observation has allowed me to put my natural empathetic nature to use - translation into actionable insights meeting business goals.

2. Communication - Building coalitions and leading myself to be a proactive catalyst for design with my cross-functional counterparts, research and technical partners and suppliers - often harnessing my passion and tenacity to influence up and down to bring teams together.

3. Consistency - Not only design language or brand language consistency, but championing new and existing processes to build credibility to the design function, the larger organization and ultimately build an expectation repeatable outcomes.

4. Design - Of most importance to me is my user-centered philosophy. While not unique to me as a designer, yet I have found that putting the user first from the early stages of a program lays a foundation for success in any context B2C, B2B and so on.

But is it fair to call this role a UX role? According to Nielson Normon Group UX is a brand differentiator:

While branding has been around since people began buying and trading goods, the definition has evolved in the Digital Age. Consumers now have a wider range of interaction with companies and greater choice in product selection. Today, brand is the holistic sum of customers’ experiences, composed of visual, tonal and behavioral brand components, many of which are shaped by interaction design. Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age

My wildly over-simplified UX model above is an attempt to show what my experience was like at GE Appliances during my tenure there. From strategic to tactical workloads across the design process the distributing of competencies vary. For example, while planning research to uncover latent user needs Empathy is a far more important and leveraged quality for a Brand Experience Designer. However, when delivering a design specification to interaction designers or product teams, clear communication of design intent would be emphasized.

So what makes the role of Brand Experience Designer important in an organization? In some organizations, from department to department, communication channels work effectively and perhaps this role isn’t necessary. However, larger organizations, or even growing companies diversifying their offerings, may begin to see the consistency of there visual brand language, tone, and even behaviors begin to drift. This is where this role would begin to provide value. Here’s how it looked in a little more detail at GE Appliances:

It is important to stress that collaboration is a big part of the role. The Brand Experience Designer is a huge catalyst for ensuring that all stakeholders are driving down the same winding road together. Sometimes it is a bumpy one, and sometimes we lose someone at a rest stop along the way, but this role has the authority to rally the team, circle the wagon, and go find that wandering and adventurous contributor and coax them back on board. Now that that metaphor is exhausted, let me talk a little about leadership and contribution.

As I was thinking about the questions I have been asked about the role and how it compares to others, it hasn’t always been clear as to whether this is a leadership role or an independent contributor role. Without a doubt in mind it is both. Above I’ve briefly described a few of the activities a Brand Experience Designer should expect to get involved in as a part of the job. Would this person need to know how to build pixel-perfect UI screens and build behaviors into interactions? No, but it would be a helpful skill to have in order to visually explain an idea to the executing team member. Would a this person need amazing sketching, CAD modelling and rendering, motion graphics, and video editing skill? Again, no, but every design communication skill that one can bring to the table gives the Brand Experience Designer more tools to influence the organization and articulate the Brand User Experience.

One brief example: I have a knack for composing articulate and compelling verbiage and have been doing so since the 5th grade. Well, it turns out marketers love it and others have leaned on me to create and/or proofread their copy for their particular projects. One simple, useful skill has opened many doors in the organization and amongst my peers. Which, in turn, has only improved my standing as a great collaborator.

What do you all think about the role? Any questions? Do you know of any similar roles in your org?