AI as ideation partner

Design ideation may conjure up the Aha! moment, the sketch on the back of an envelope or the lone creative genius. Everyday ideation in creative industries, however, suggests that successful ideas are the result of many minds and hands working collaboratively. Indeed Mark Twain, the American author, in emphasising the combinatorial nature of creativity, held that substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources. But drawing on very large outside sources, and across domains is what generative AI does well. And so, while designers will never stop coming up with great ideas, AI can augment that creativity. That is, when designers only have vague initial ideas, generative AI can help to crystalise ithem. In fact, using generative AI such as ChatGPT designers no longer have to "waste" their time coming up with already existing ideas. Instead they can apply their creative energy towards iterating, assembling, and combining to create new ideas that they would not have been able to do without the help of AI. However, generative AI might tempt designers to start the design process through prompt engineering (describing a task that an AI should perform) rather than, say, idea sketching using pen and paper. That is, generative AI, as an ideation tool, may sideline or bypass traditional ways of getting the design process started. But if going straight to AI, what impact will AI have on reflective design principles while designing? Or, as held by Umberto Eco, the philosopher and writer, 'Thanks to the resistance of pen and paper, it does make one slow down and think'.