[Photo via Beijing Daily]

On September 21, with the opening of the 2023 Beijing International Design Week, the "Design Thinking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" forum was also held at the permanent site of the Beijing International Design Week in Zhangjiawan Design Town, Tongzhou District. More than 20 design and education experts from around the world gathered to discuss topics such as design thinking and talent cultivation in the age of artificial intelligence.

The original talent cultivation model for design needs to be broken.

"In the age of artificial intelligence, do teachers of our age (in their fifties and sixties) still have the qualifications to teach students majoring in design?" During the roundtable discussion, more than one senior professor of design at a university raised this question.

Wang Zhong, Dean of the Urban Design and Innovation Research Institute of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, reminded industry insiders present to consider whether our understanding of the age of artificial intelligence is deep enough. "The core of the age of artificial intelligence is exponential development." Wang Zhong gave an example of the concept of exponential stacking. If you repeatedly fold a piece of A4 paper, by the 43rd fold, the thickness of the paper will exceed the distance from the earth to the moon. With the emergence of quantum computing, exponential stacking becomes even more powerful. "According to the 'New Moore's Law,' the total amount of data in human history doubles every 18 months. If we do not have a deep understanding of this, and only use artificial intelligence as an auxiliary tool for design and thinking, then we are underestimating this era," he said.

A set of tables drawn by Wang Zhong shows that the traditional training model for designers is a closed loop of creativity, technology, works, and products. Future designers need to understand artificial intelligence, big data, user experience, blockchain, IP, development design, new technology platform applications, and humanistic aesthetics. "Today, we are discussing how to cultivate talents from the perspective of schools. We need to know that the current cultivation of design talents and design thinking first needs to break the existing disciplines and blocks, which are talent cultivation models that have been inherited from the industrial civilization era and are not suitable for the current era," Wang Zhong said.

Design will no longer be the "patent" of professionals.

"Insight and empathy are crucial." He Renke, Chairman of the Academic Committee of the School of Design and Art at Hunan University, said that especially in the age of artificial intelligence, this is the advantage of human designers. However, this insight and empathy will no longer be the "patent" of design students or design professionals. In the age of artificial intelligence, the threshold for design is decreasing because new technology platforms have filled the previous technological gap. Whoever has a broader vision and can effectively issue instructions to guide design tools will become an excellent designer.

"In the future, everyone can design, and everyone can be a designer." Based on this consensus, Chen Hanqing, the honorary dean of the School of Art and Design at Wuhan University of Technology, predicts that "there will be fewer students majoring in design in the future, but more students from various majors will take the elective course of design thinking." It is very likely that in the future, students majoring in mechanical engineering, physics, computer science, and other majors will take two courses, one in design thinking and one in design expression, to graft and cross their original learning. He said that this kind of cross-disciplinary learning is a turning point in the education model.

At the scene, Beijing International Design Week and China Media University jointly released the "2023 Design Thinking Research Report." The report shows that more and more schools, government organizations, enterprises, and business consulting agencies in China have realized the importance of cultivating design thinking. "In addition to professional course construction, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Communication University of China, ShanghaiTech University, and others have all launched general education courses with 'design thinking' as the core." Shui Linlin, dean of the Design Thinking Institute of Communication University of China, introduced that even Tongji University and Beijing Normal University have landed design thinking teaching in middle schools and primary schools, showing the urgency of starting design education from childhood.

Cross-disciplinary talents bring creative design.

At the opening ceremony of the Design Week, a small exhibition-"Digital Art and Fashion Exhibition Based on AIGC-Assisted Design" was held, where the creative ideas of cross-disciplinary talents and the market results achieved can be seen.

Beijing Skelton Technology Co., Ltd. showcased their toddler walking shoes. The design of the shoes is instructed by humans, and artificial intelligence completes the design, optimization, and production. "The core members of the team come from sculpture, industrial design, mechanics, and bionics." Xu Fanglei, one of the company's founders, said that during the design process, the team continuously refined human instructions and trained the design ability of artificial intelligence to realize human design intentions. For example, the walking shoes must meet the conditions of softness, the front third of the shoe can be bent, breathability, good wrapping, and no thread in the cotton fabric part. "Look at the crystal lattice structure of the sole, it is consistent with the architectural language style of the famous architect Zaha Hadid, and also applies parameterized bionic structures. We are not doing grand architecture, but small daily necessities. And this is the result of cross-disciplinary knowledge application." Xu Fanglei said that the product won global design awards as soon as it was launched and appeared on major global e-commerce platforms.

"Compared with artificial intelligence, humans are better at creating and innovating from 0 to 1. To cultivate human innovation and creativity, practical experience of industry, academia, and research is effective." At the main forum of the Design Week, Jiang Li, director of the Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Future Education Center at Stanford University, shared Stanford's practice experience of more than half a century, hoping to provide reference for domestic peers.