Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful tool in industrial design, offering unprecedented opportunities for creativity. However, it comes with significant challenges—especially when creating something truly novel that deviates from established norms.
Try to design a circular-shaped printer, and you will discover AI’s key limitations:
Training – AI is trained on existing ideas and products; anything new will confuse and challenge the AI.
Manual Editing Required – AI-generated outputs often need extensive manual adjustments to achieve desired quality, shape, and accuracy.
Limited Context Understanding – AI tools struggle to grasp nuanced project requirements, necessitating constant manual refinement.
Creativity Balance – While AI handles complex calculations, human designers bring essential intuition and emotional intelligence.
Skill Adaptation and Transparency – Integrating AI into the design process requires learning new tools and methods while adapting workflows. Additionally, there’s a growing need for transparency in how AI algorithms work to build trust among designers, stakeholders, and end-users (more on this in my next article).
My Strategic Approach
To overcome these challenges, I developed a structured workflow:
– Use AI for initial concept generation.
– Manually refine designs using Photoshop, Affinity Design, Sketchbook, SolidWorks, and other tools.
– Create an iterative design process.
– Push creative boundaries beyond AI-generated outputs.
– Validate designs with stakeholders.
Following this approach, I was able to get the results I was looking for.