Reimagining design education in the age of AI

Earlier this week, I talked about the challenges facing junior designers and the erosion of traditional entry points into our industry. I ended with a call to action: It’s on us to forge new pathways and reimagine what mentorship could look like in 2024 and beyond. Enter Kelin Carolyn Zhang. This fall, Kelin is teaching “AI Software Design Studio” to industrial design students at RISD. When the department head approached her about teaching digital product design, she had a proposal: Rather than teaching design the way it’s traditionally been taught, why not prepare students for where the industry is heading—even if we’re not quite sure where that is yet? “Design education has historically always lagged behind industry, and for good reason—you want processes to be standardized before you can teach them,” Kelin tells me. “But right now the world is changing so quickly that even the industry is trying to figure itself out. I wanted to leapfrog this uncertainty, think about how designers s

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