This past summer we sat down with the former Microsoft partner and design director, Steve Kaneko, to discuss the current and future impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on the practice and product of architecture. We hope you enjoy this topical conversation as much as we did. Part-1 can be read here.
Who should be designing places and things in the near future is an open question, right?
The truth is, as creative tools become part of everyone’s skill set, everyone can and will take advantage of them; the question is, what differentiates a professional’s work from a layperson? Today, if one learns software central to the game industry, such as Unity and Unreal, they can create things that people can download and experience in virtual and augmented realities. The bar is not high, and a lot of bad stuff is being created with no quality control. As an industrial designer who’s had to evolve into someone who could design in the digital product design world, I understand the challenges when traversing industries. The tools and development practices of software design are very different than what we would use in hardware.
An alternative to a future dystopia is a world that is so plain and banal that it’s mind numbing. We may end up living in pristine white boxes where the excitement of design happens with a headset on. Is this already an antiquated way of thinking since a designer’s role will be to design virtual experiences?
I can see a response that is austere—an outcome of hyper-rich digital imagery and spaces. More interestingly, I can also see a physical world, a heightened need for sensorial feedback—fuzzy things, olfactory stimulation, sound, ornament that you can touch, things that provide different corporeal experiences that compensate for the fully digital world. (Alert: the digital world will also enable tactile feedback via gloves and devices.) Sensory experiences are going to matter more than ever. We’re going to need physical experiences that remind us that we are physical humans, where imperfection is beautiful, and appreciated more than ever.
Because human factors are fundamental, it seems that you are saying that we will come full circle in our physical need to interact in a way that touches our senses, yes?
I want to believe that, and as I said before, the future should be what we make it rather than something that happens to us. If I had to create a brand/product line today, I would embrace this as a pillar philosophy of my designs. Everything would go through a filter of what makes us human, and as a result, what in the analog world should be represented. I suppose this has always been a quality of great design, it just might be more necessary than ever.
How should current day architecture students prepare for their professional AI futures, so much of which is unknown?
I believe architecture students are already pretty savvy with a variety of computer-aided design tools that bias design outcomes. The “toolchains” for AI and mixed-reality are quickly evolving. They might consider embracing adjacent professional tools, like Unity and other software packages that focus on simulating interactive experiences. Explore tools that produce objects and places that can be downloaded and shared in marketplaces like Sketchfab or Trimble’s 3D warehouse. FIGMA is a universal UX tool that would familiarize them with the world of interaction design software. The future of design, in my humble opinion, is a mashup of four to five design disciplines, including architecture, but it has yet to identify a single tool or pedagogy that can capture the immense problem-surface-area. Ultimately, it’s important to be facile in many languages.
Do you have any recommendations for books, movies, streaming series, or anything else that would prepare our readers for the new reality?
Hollywood has pretty much covered this subject from all angles, but mostly paints a pretty dark picture with Ready Player One-depictions of the metaverse. But they often pose the right questions, and leave viewers with the conclusion that technology is neither inherently good or bad; more, it’s how we as human beings decide to deploy it. Her offers a very nuanced view of how subtle intelligent entities can exist and become a meaningful part of our lives, instead of scary, creepy, and invasive bots.
One book that combines architectural theory and things like AI is Molly Wright Steenson’s Architectural Intelligence. There are so many relevant shared concepts between architecture and how programmers need to think when writing code, which Steenson unpacks. It’s no surprise that she references Christopher Alexander’s work, which has always been appreciated by software architects.
Final thoughts?
To sum up, I think there are three basic responses to the accelerated rate of change to our professions due to technologies like AI:
1. Opt Out
Get “off the grid” and remain pure to what we all know. This response is digestible, but don’t be fooled—as long as you watch TV, have a credit card, and use a computer or phone, you’re already entangled, as AI types call it.
2. Monitor and Experiment
Continue solving today’s hard problems the best way you know how given what you’ve been trained to do, all while keeping an open mind and a cautious ear to what is happening around you. Don’t be a victim of technological change by being left standing still when (not if) it hits an inflection point. Moderate how much you embrace it, and set goals to learn about AI, VR, AR and the digital world overall. Hire software designers and front end engineers. Then strategically add them to your holistic solutions for buildings, environments, and artifacts. I believe the majority would find this the most practical path.
3. Go All In
You will have to drink from the firehose like anyone at the epicenter of technology today, and challenge all of your preconceived notions about the right or wrong way to design. This is what it felt like working on the HoloLens, the world’s first holographic computer from Microsoft. (Factoid: Microsoft was 7 years ahead of Apple and their Vision Pro.) It’s humbling, exciting, and terrifying at the same time because there are no design precedents for this new age of spatial computing and AI. The business model of building products, let alone a career in this space is still not fully understood or realized. Companies are reluctant to even whisper the terms metaverse or mixed-reality because the street hasn’t been convinced that there is a why for this new world. This response is not for the faint of heart, but needed to make positive progress. I just hope there is world class design representation at the table when the sausage is being made.
In the end, if history truly repeats itself, technologies will be introduced into this world simply because they can be. However, the distance between science fiction and science fact, to consumer introduction has never been so compressed, creating urgency for design professionals to get their acts together fast. The opportunity to embrace this world being driven primarily by science is exciting, but possibly backwards from the past where science could not do what we dreamed. Today, technology can do more than what we really know there are problems for, which is not in itself a bad thing. I think we are now limited by our creativity and imagination in solving today’s problems in different ways, or in our ability to forecast new ones. I’ll bet on designers to make something wonderful, life-changing, and beautiful out of all that enhances and amplifies the positive in our lives.
Steve Kaneko, FIDSAis a seasoned product design executive and Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America. Since departing Microsoft in 2019, he has been an advisor at Kaneko Design Group, LLC, collaborating with corporate leaders to establish experience design systems, capabilities, and cultures crucial for leveraging design’s strategic role in our new technology era. More, having navigated the waves of computing from the PC to mixed-reality and AI, Steve’s background as an industrial designer has expanded to encompass a deep understanding of ergonomics, design research, branding, human interaction, and experience-design storytelling and orchestration. Steve lives in the Seattle, Washington area with his family.