Research Methods - 2024
Project name: “Collaborating with Gemini: Exploring the Role of AI in Tinkering Activities”
Co-designers: Julie Heij, Dia Samit, Tessa van Maanen
Grade: 8.7
Expertise Areas: CA / MDC
Project description
The goal of this course was to enhance a design process using AI. As the team was mostly focussing on Material Driven Design (Karana et al., 2015) at the time, it seemed interesting to see how AI would influence this process. A hands-on tinkering workshop was organised in which participants could tinker together with materials and with the help of Gemini (Google AI). Afterwards the participants were asked their opinion about the workshop. Gemini was mostly used to overcome creative blocks, gain inspiration and to suggest new iterations. Drawbacks were that Gemini was not able to document the input of the participants, and it was difficult to type the prompts with dirty hands from the tinkering.
Reflection
I believe that creativity is a unique human skill and I am not a fan of using AI to enhance the creative process. Nonetheless, this course has taught me to evaluate concepts using a workshop. This data gathering method seemed promising as physical data is being created and gathered. The workshop was also combined with a semistructured interview, allowing me to improve my preparation and interviewing skills for future projects.
Karana, E., Barati, B., Rognoli, V., & Zeeuw Van Der Laan, A. (2015). Material driven design (MDD): A method to design for material experiences. International journal of design, 9(2), 35-54.https://re.public.polimi.it/handle/11311/979536