Juan Noguera: Generative AI in Industrial Design

We’ve heard a lot about how generative AI may negatively impact careers in design. But we wonder how might generative AI have a positive impact on designers? How might generative AI be used as a tool that helps designers rather than as a replacement for designers? How might we use generative AI in design education? How do design educators and their students feel about generative AI? How else might generative AI help designers in ways that we haven’t uncovered yet?

To answer these questions, we talked with Juan Noguera about his individual design work, his teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and about his recent article in The Conversation entitled DALL-E 2 and Midjourney can be a boon for industrial designers. Juan proposes that AI image generation programs can be a fantastic way to improve the design process. Juan’s story about using generative AI working with bronze artisans in Guatemala is particularly compelling.

Juan Noguera is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A Guatemalan, he was raised in a colorful and vivid culture. He quickly developed an interest in how things were made, tearing everything he owned apart, and putting it back together, often with a few leftover pieces.

We enjoyed talking with Juan about his teaching, about his student’s projects, and about ideas he has for how AI might be able to help designers more in the future.

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