Design innovation often follows technical advances. For example, when Philips invented the cassette recorder in 1962, designers innovated this technology to create new things like the boombox, Walkman, and car audio player. Designers innovate by situating a known technology in a new place and in a new form that brings value to people's lives. Today, everyone's talking about AI. Interestingly, we see very little design innovation happening with this material. New products and services are being created, but they are mostly one-off uses of the technology.

This research investigates how to make the capabilities and possibilities of AI more accessible to design innovators. We want to make it function more as a design material to allow designers to envision new products and services that engineers with a PhD in machine learning are less likely to imagine.