Artificial intelligence workshop - product design laboratory

The primary objective of this workshop was to expose students to a variety of generative AI tools for concept design work, allowing them to input text and images to stimulate the design investigation and exploratory stages of the design process. The workshop had a project theme: to shape code a character into a general purpose social robot—an automated intelligent machine intended to interact with human customers, providing information or services. Specific AI tools, such as Chat GPT and Vizcom.ai were utilised during this hands-on exploration.

Over the three days, students worked in four teams to approach this exercise, researching potential social positions this new product could achieve or how it could benefit customers. Subsequently, these ideas were developed through written prompts, sketches, and soft models, which were then uploaded to image-generating AI software. This steep learning process yielded outstanding outputs for all four groups, considering the limited time available. The workshop concluded with the presentation of four new product design concepts, each boasting unique forms and functions to facilitate social interaction with human customers.

The workshop also fostered collaboration incentives. Given that the students from the ESAD MA course had never worked with MA students from UMa before, relationships had to be established quickly to enable effective team interaction. Consider highlighting specific examples of successful collaboration or challenges faced during this process.

This workshop event not only provided valuable pedagogical activities to reinforce students' learning experiences and career opportunities but also facilitated the development of relationships between academic institutes, paving the way for future collaborative investigations.

This annual event serves as a vital supplement to the academic curriculum, underscoring the commitment of the ESAD MA Product Design Course to providing students with holistic and immersive learning experiences with emerging technologies.