Generative Artifical Inteligence (GAI) Assisted Product Design Process

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has emerged as a powerful tool in various creative fields, including product design. This study investigates how GAI can enhance the product design process, especially in the development stage of the design thinking process, by boosting creativity, efficiency, and ideation. The study is project-based learning on product design 1 subject, in which 12 groups of students work in pairs to create new shoe designs using GAI. The students were guided through design thinking approaches and used GAI during the development stage, which required them to sketch and improve their sketches before submitting them to GAI. Surveys, feedback forms, and project assessments were utilized to determine the effect of GAI on creativity and design outputs. The findings show that GAI substantially raised students’ creative output, allowing for more diverse idea exploration and improved efficiency in developing design concepts. To help the GAI generate useable designs, the study identified specific prompts that can improve design outcomes: product category, descriptive phrases for shoe shape, material type, color, and features. In addition, hyper-realistic, hyper-detailed, UHD, and 8 K prompts were found effective to ensure that the designs were realistic and detailed. While GAI aided in the quick generation of novel concepts, several of the designs produced were deemed impractical or impossible to manufacture. Hence, Students’ design knowledge in manufacturing and material played a critical role in evaluating the feasibility of GAI-generated concepts. But overall, the integration of GAI in the product design process provides new perspectives, allowing designers to overcome creative blocks and generate ideas more rapidly. This research supports the integration of GAI into the design thinking process, particularly in the development stage. By understanding both the capabilities and limitations of GAI, product designers can enhance their creative and innovative potential, contributing to a more innovative and forwardthinking design industry.