The exponential development and advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has led to the possibility of automation. They have been rapidly innovating and transforming industries across the world.

Artificial intelligence and automation make any machine’s work process more comfortable, which would otherwise require superior intelligence by humans. Computers built with the power of artificial intelligence and automation will have the intellectual ability to self-learn and optimize their behavior based on their former experience.

A study conducted by a team of enthusiastic Tech Jury in 2020 identified the following:

• Artificial intelligence and automation can improve the work and any business productivity by 40%.
• Competitive advantage can be improved by 84% with the help of AI development and automation integration.
• Currently, more than 97% of digital users are already using AI-enhanced voice assistants.

Use Cases Of AI Development And Automation In Design That Has Been Already Benefiting Companies

• Netflix realized the implementation of automation and leveraged machine learning to personalize the streaming platform design, and they saved USD one billion in the process.
• Wix provides the capabilities of creating a web design that exceeds the market standards with Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI).
• Firedrop provides automated content presentation styles and templates, along with a virtual conversation assistant. They also offer the ability to run A/B tests for design.

Challenges Faced by Designers without AI Development and Automation

• Scaling limitations of a design application without qualitative automated suggestion makes the re-work of an artwork design much harder.
• Creating customer journey maps with accurate product design metrics would not be possible if not for the intuitive recommendations suggested by AI and automation techniques.
• Designing user-centric products, projects with efficient validating exercises, and ethnographic studies would not have been in existence if not for the AI improvements made today in designing.
• Redundancy in designing leads to the creativity barricade and demotivation for the designer.

Will AI And Automation Replace Designers?

Given all the above facts, it seems very likely that AI development provides numerous benefits to designing, but it does not mean it can replace designers. Automation and AI are merely technologies that boost a designer’s ability to go beyond their thinking capabilities and not override them. In other words, robotics that includes AI and automation is just an exoskeleton that provides algorithm-driven design tools to help designers prepare and personalize user experience.

How Exactly Does AI & Automation Help The Design Industry?

Stimulating Creativity

Artificial intelligence reduces redundancy by automating repetitive tasks through constant evaluation and analyzing the designers’ behavior on the system or the design software. Such automation measures promote research and help plan the performance and visual attributes of the design. Such sort of AI-powered tools allow designers to think outside their box. By letting automation take care of everyday work, designers can save time by building ideas and boosting their creativity.

Example: Adobe is already using an AI technique that they call “Sensei Stitch” that allows designers to identify a design pattern that requires patching, which makes the job of a designer much more straightforward.

Customizing User Preferences

Since artificial intelligence and automation can analyze the designer’s behavior, they can store the learned behavior and predict patterns by mapping the designer activity. AI algorithms are written to identify the platform it functions on and designs created with it, and that paves a pathway for designers to explore their target audience. Overall, this self-learning stimulated behavior allows designers to cater to developing needs to a group of audiences and individual customers and added creativity.

Example: Lensa, an android based AI application created by Prisma Labs, provides one-button designing ability with photoshop features such as face re-work, re-touch, etc.

Design Variation

Automation development helps designers to ease their job. Artificial intelligence, with its power of recognizing patterns, extracting design colors and structures, can create multiple variations with thousands of color and pattern rangers from just one design created. The creation of various variations with AI in the case of logo designing has proven to be helpful. Once a designer identifies the brand pattern and color, AI development of algorithms uses the domain pattern to create multiple variations by opening the door to creativity with various color and pattern combinations.

Example: Nutella Unica design once used artificial intelligence-based algorithms to create millions of color and pattern combinations, resulting in more than a million sales.

Humanized Automation

More than a machine, more than code, AI, and automation make designing more humanistic. For instance, voice assistants’ usage makes designers quickly access feedback and report profiling on their design. Once the designer provides the input of content and design patterns, the AI development approach helps designers create and choose the visual style. The improvements made can be accessed via the voice assistant.

Example: MS office, Firedrop, and Microsoft use personal assistants and AI-powered design features to create unique design layout styles.

Design For Non-techies

Artificial intelligence is excellent; designing with AI is even better, but what if the designer is a non-tech professional? Not all designers are techies or tech-savvy. In most cases, not everyone is a designer, but with AI-driven crafted solutions filled with data, even non-tech designers can quickly build unique ideas and designs. More likely, most organizations today use AI to develop automated design templates that help them develop exciting websites, software, and platforms. Even Medium and Wix take advantage of such benefits from AI-based design.

Example: The Grid is an AI stimulated CMS website that provides a semi-automated platform to create a high-quality design for websites within minutes.

Design System Improvement

A survey conducted by Adobe indicated that 69% of the designers believed that AI and automation would increase over the next few years and improve the demand for designing in the process. Almost every designer at Adobe thinks that AI is a tool that will help them to scale up their content creation and design workflow by personalizing the design experience. AI development also allows designers to create robust designs with customized interactions and functions that can be consistent for many users without changing the core design.

Example: Squarespace, Wix ADI, EyeQuant take AI to a whole another level to create automated design systems that predict user patterns with 85% accuracy. Such systems also make use of the feedback provided.

Real-world AI-driven Design Applications

Over several years, there have been tremendous improvements and advancements in the field of AI and automation. Today, there is even a possibility to create Deep Neural Networks (DNN) that offers designers the opportunity to rethink their modernistic roles of designing similar to the concept of AI portrayed in movies such as Iron Man, Ex Machina, and so on. Following are some of the trending and advanced AI and automated tools that can be used for designing:

Rene

It is an AI-driven designer tool created by Jon Gold, who built an automated designer machine that can make typographic decisions. Rene begins automated algorithms by observing the designer’s work behavior to analyze graphs and formulate basic design guidelines. Rene also understands the user pattern to provide the best combination of typography solutions.

Vox

You might be aware of website designing, but have you heard about the home page generator? Like Flipboard, Vox uses automated algorithms to combine different advanced tools, libraries, and kits to automatically generate multiple web page layout options with a score of its own based on traits that have been fed as data. According to the highest score, Vox picks the best structure for its homepage design.

Designscape

University of Toronto and Adobe built an experimental and impressive AI system that serves as a layout designer. Designscope refines the website design layout by providing necessary hints and automated tips to develop websites or simple slides with new compositions. Google slides and MS PowerPoint are some similar examples.

Airbnb

Though Airbnb is not a designing platform, it never stopped them from leveraging AI to analyze hand-drawn sketches and use automated machine learning codes to develop those sketches into refined design components. Microsoft has been working on similar concepts, and such kind of functionalities prove to be the fastest way of transforming a roughly drawn hand sketch into a completely working prototype.

Brandmark

Why hire a designer when you can leverage AI to create a logo for yourself? Yet, this question is exaggerated as AI is not a replacement for a designer. Brandmark is a platform that provides users with the ability to create media graphics, applications icons, logos, business card designs, and so much more with ready-to-use assets developed with UI kits powered by AI and automation.

Google AutoDraw

Google created another experiment project. All those designers have to do is a doodle, and AutoDraw will suggest by guessing the element that the designer is trying to design or draw. AutoDraw is one of the best tools for non-tech designers looking for a quality-driven tool to create icons or designs for their mockups. Some researchers even quote this tool as “algorithms that can make human-like sketches”.

Conclusion:

Creating a clutter-free graphical feature or design asset with multiple variations is one of the most challenging jobs for a designer, given the creativity limitations and constraints. With all the above-said advancements and automated assets, AI development has proven to be one of the most friendly technologies today and for designing.

Leveraging the power of AI also proves to be one of the most creative, productive, and opportunistic technologies that the design industry has ever seen. Thinking outside the box is often the requirement for designers, and AI-driven automated capabilities are the perfect tech-friendly solutions for today and tomorrow.