[Music] [Music] all right hello everyone how are you oh come on I am the last talk of today how are you yes thank you I need all your energy because I am very very excited to be here with you all to talk about the design Renaissance I'm Regin Gilbert a James wden Johnson professor at New York University all right so the design Renaissance what I'm going to talk about today is Renaissance through the years the role of designers in a AI driven World embracing generative Ai and the power of play can I just ask you
all to do something real quick because you have been sitting can everybody just stand and stretch just real quick because I see y'all sitting just real quick thank you all right cuz I was like people are yawning okay all right let's sit down so I have a story for you all back in 2017 I was a lead ux designer and I got laid off from my job something a lot of people can relate to I was feeling angry uninspired unmotivated and a friend of mine said why don't you play why don't you sketch why don't
you draw and so I did and without realizing it I kind of had my own design Renaissance a Renaissance is a time of rebirth renewal new ideas creativity and I'm going to show you all my sketch because I'm not ashamed I believe everybody can draw so my sketch it says Doodles at the top there's three boxes it says AI AR VR this points to users underneath that I have platforms Google home Echo mobile Smartwatch smart jewelry smart glasses VR headset Smart TVs Raspberry Pi underneath that it says usability problems goals business needs goals again and
a bunch of question marks and I wrote where are we going and what problems are we solving without realizing it I had no idea that my life would actually turn into this work so I went on from being uh without a job to being a senior manager of ux having my own consulting company becoming a professor and being up here with you all today on the [Applause] stage and I think some of my students are in here today so hello to you all yes Basu is somewhere I think in here okay so um I want
to talk to you about Renaissance through the years I'm going to talk about uh the most important Renaissance to me in the last couple years which is yes anybody noticed the monop font I used okay so this is uh the Renaissance World Tour Beyonce's World Tour I got to see Beyonce in London last year it was amazing but there are also other Renaissance right the Italian Renaissance which was artistic humanistic transformative time of rebirth the industrial Renaissance technological mechanized revolutionary and Industrial the bow house movement functional minimalist modernist and Innovative the Harlem Renaissance was vibrant
cultural artistic and empowering and what I think we're in now the design Renaissance which is a time of evolution collaboration Innovation and transformation are you tired of hearing about AI yes yes some people are not okay well I went on Adobe Firefly and I asked you know I I put in the prompt is AI tired of hearing about Ai and it gave me these three images like a person looking um a person looking down with skulls on the desk I don't know either uh and just a person looking bored right uh which was very interesting
then I went on chat GPT and I asked if AI is tired of hearing about Ai and it says as an AI I don't experience emotions or fatigue I don't get tired or bored of hearing about any topic including AI itself my purpose is to assist and provide information based on the queries and the tasks given and if you have any questions please feel free to ask so unlike us who get tired AI doesn't get tired of hearing about Ai and when we think of Renaissance and a time of renewal I I want to talk
about the Italian Renaissance briefly so the Renaissance saw significant advancements in astronomy uh philosophy writing Arts right painting and sculpture and a big part of that was Leonardo Da Vinci right a lot of the sketches that we know of of the human body came from Leonardo da Vinci who was a multifaceted genius right and he envisioned early flying machines all kinds of things right um and he contributed so much to Art science engineering um and demonstrated that we require creativity and deep thinking so what's the role of designers in an AI driven world we literally
hear about AI every single day um but what does it mean for us I want to talk about how it can actually decrease our creativity right so relying solely on AI can diminish fundamental skills and designers because it bypasses the necessity for original creative thinking which is crucial for Innovation AI tends to generate outputs based on pre-existing data leading to similar results that lack the unique touch and diversity stemming from Human creativity so without mental engagement in the creative process designers risk becoming passive in their practice ultimately the overuse of AI can lead to stagnation
and creative growth making it essential for designers to balance AI use with active Hands-On creativity how many of you have a prti practice that's creative that's not on a computer like half of you okay more of you should probably do some something okay so I want to talk about what AI can do um if you watched the keynote earlier uh we saw some awesome stuff that's happening with figma in AI so AI can streamline design tasks like resizing images generating color p pallets and creating layouts right it can analyze user data to provide insights and
act as a brainstorming brainstorming partner for designers AI can also help create content and tailor user experiences for personalized interactions so what can we do that AI can't so last year I was working on a book uh that'll be coming out next year called human spatial computing and I had uh some I had four researchers working for me last summer and they were reading the book and one of them read a chapter and she said I think it's good but I feel like I could just learn this on chat GPT I was like okay fair
so that made me start thinking differently as an educator as somebody who does workshops with professionals um as a human human being like what can I do that AI can't and I've taken that with me um with with uh the the workshops that I've done and the classes that I've taught since so emotions and humor so emotion and humor and design can forge strong connections uh Foster positive associations and create memorable experiences for the audience ethical judgment ethic ethics require content always but ethical judgment and the maintenance of creative practices are essential to ensure responsible
sustainable designs and fresh Innovative perspectives imbalancing technology and creativity right so continually uh integrating new methods to keep designs current Innovative and human- centered so this is what we can do that AI can't emotion and design any fans of the wire okay so this is a 404 page 404 page is when you get an error and uh there's a photo of clay from The Wire who often said can I get that one more time okay so to me this is a very funny 404 page it says sheet there's a photo of clay there's a four
there's a peach Emoji that's supposed to be a zero and the the the font is very tiny but it says looks like that page ain't here for some people this is funny for me this is funny so I asked Dolly to create a funny page for me and this is what it created so it's a robot it says 404 page not found there's a son with a sad face on it is this funny yes it's cute right so it's just a big difference so again thinking about the times and the changes and Renaissance I want
to next move to the bow house movement is anybody familiar yes okay fans all right so the bow house movement was a significant transformation and design principles and practices it helped to unify art craft and Technology breaking down the barriers between Fine Arts and applied arts and here I have an image of a building it was a signif had significant impact on architecture with a lot of clean straight lines and bold colors I like to tie the bow house movement to inclusion and accessibility so I am uh the author of inclusive design for digital world
uh I wrote that book five years ago I'm doing a second edition now um and it's important so the bow house movement emphasize functionality Simplicity and user Centric design principles that are foundational to creating accessible and inclusive environments clous designers aim to make everyday objects and spaces more usable and efficient for everyone which aligns with modern efforts to ensure accessibility and inclusion in design so yesterday uh I was asked what is something I think uh designers don't think maybe is important and I think it's Simplicity I think people think if something is simple then it's
not good but that's not true and I think uh I gave the example of Craigslist as a great example something that's simple and still valuable so I can't go on without talking about ethics how many in here are fans of Ethics I would hope so so with AI we have a lot of ethical considerations right so data privacy right uh algorithmic bias and social implications uh as we've seen so what steps can we take to make designs more ethical first and foremost data privacy so we can strict to data we can stick to strict data
privacy protocols and avoid using sensitive user info and a AI models to keep everything safe and ethical secondly understanding bias first and foremost understand your own I think this is key for people who don't go and take the test it's free uh to understand your bias uh get involved in training sessions on bias and always try to include diverse perspectives in your designs lastly and this is most important never stop learning never stop learning right so keep up with AI ethics by attending workshops and reading up and push for transparency and a AI practices at
work I know a lot of folks work in corporations and you don't want to say anything but you know what you can do you can ask questions you can ask questions right you may not want to come out and but you can always ask a question so Garrett Morgan was the inventor of our modern day uh traffic signal could you imagine a world without traffic signals just for a second think about it yeah so back in the day uh like in the 20s traffic signals were just a stop and a go right they weren't what
we know of today so uh when I think about like the industrial Renaissance in that time I think about people who were solving problems right and so I love using like trap GPT and Dolly so I asked Dolly to create a image of Garrett Morgan who was driving around Cleveland and was like this is a mess and decided to come up with a traffic signal so this is it what it came up with does anybody know what Garrett Morgan actually looks like can you take a guess because this is a white man and this is
Garrett Morgan right so I was like I literally was laughing for five minutes because I couldn't believe it and then I typed in Garrett Morgan is black okay just like that and uh chat G said I apologize for the oversight let's create an image that accur accurately represents Garrett Morgan and so it created this not quite the not quite there but uh you know it's it's something so although AI is helpful we don't fully know the extent of the data sets being used you still need to do your own research um but it still makes
for a creative partner so I think we need to Embrace generative AI at least I had to uh this past semester I pulled my design students and asked them how many of you are using generative AI all of them how often are you using it every day so my students get the get the pleasure of uh working on a project um so if you think about an eclipse um how do you experience an eclipse if you can't see it yeah this is a fun project my students get to work on we we get to work
on this uh NASA uh Eclipse soundscape citizen project award number 80 in SS c21 m008 required for me to say that um so my students get to work on the uxui to help folks in the Blind and low vision communities experience an eclipse through sound so people will get sound they they got sound recorders during the previous two eclips that we had that that gets uploaded and my students helped design that site sometimes they take our advice sometimes they don't that's how it goes with clients so uh this past semester I actually required my students
to incorporate AI into their research plants uh because they were using it anyway and so I was going to go with the flow so they used it to help them with question preparing questions they used it uh they used figma's uh beta AI for user flows but it couldn't help them with things like learning how to use a screen reader that I had to bring in a real person right with who was blind with lived experience to teach them how to use a screen reader and when I think about sounds I think about as I
move into the next Renaissance the Harlem Renaissance so a lot of great music and other things came out of the Harlem Renaissance uh here I have an image of Harlem in the 20s and a bunch of kids playing the Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant cultural movement that highlighted the diverse talents and perspectives of African-American artists writers and musicians this period had a significant impact on American Aman culture empowering African American expression and leaving a lasting Legacy in literature music and art this leads me to the power of play now I get to teach fun things
like the web content accessibility guidelines okay yay yay to my accessibility people but doing a lecture on it is not not as impactful as people playing with Legos so what I did was I gave prompts to my students and they use different shapes and textures to represent text and images for perceivability created navig na navigable elements for operability designed logical layouts for understandability and ensured robustness by making structures modifiable and supportive of additional elements so this helped so I want us to embark on a on minute creative Adventure can we do that okay cool so
imagine you have a magical paintbrush that can paint with colors sounds smells and even tastes your canvas is a portal to another world so you can can close your eyes or keep them open I want everybody to do this right just put down your phone you could do one minute okay so maybe it's a jungle with Singing Trees a city made of candy or a beach where the waves play music if you can't see images in your mind think about the story your world tells and The Sensation it evokes ready close your eyes or keep
them open but imagine a world it's just momentum of your life okay I think that was a minute all right so every single person person in this room thought of something different every single person online who's watching this thought of something different that is what we can do that AI can't so I don't know what the future of design and AI is like but I want you to think about this think of AI as an advanced coffee machine in the world of design while it can Brew the perfect cup it can't replicate the barista's flare
for creativity the human touch and the unique blend of flavors only you can create just as every coffee is a remix of beans water and technique your designs remix past Inspirations and Innovations using AI as a tool the Industrial Revolution brought new coffee making Technologies but it took skilled Baristas to transform them into delightful experiences despite the risks of overreliance on machines as designers Your Role is to blend ai's Precision with your Creative Touch to craft ethical practical and innovative solutions and don't forget to make them inclusive and accessible please so much like the bow
house movement's seamless integration of art craft and technology in the coffee world and don't forget context matters for any scenario that you're doing one of the things I started doing in 2020 was warm-ups because I like to work out and I always warm up um if you use chat GPT I created a chatbot for designer warm-ups uh you can use the QR code here if you have it on your phone and if you don't you can go to https semicolon SL SL bit. l/d designer warmup I want to leave you with this quote from my
dear friend Eric Talbert who is in the audience where you at Eric woohoo thank you all right he said our rigidity is a direct response to our insecurity you take that as you wish but we have an opportunity to have the design Renaissance it starts with us and with that I want to thank you for your time [Applause] [Music]
