These days, it seems everywhere I go, I am either reading a news story or hearing a conversation about AI. With AI already offering helpful tools to assist interior designers with tasks such as enhancing renderings, selecting color palettes, and exploring furniture layouts, the applicability to our field is clear.

I was recently contacted by an Auburn Interior Design alumna in the professional field who was wondering what AI tools we are teaching students in the interior design program. (I let her know that many faculty in the Auburn Interior Design program have been incorporating AI into studios over the past couple of years, for example giving students the opportunity to try out some of its rendering capabilities).

This alumna and I ended up having a great conversation over a virtual call, and she provided helpful insight from an industry perspective. One of the points she made was that although AI can help with tasks like iteration in the space planning process, a professional interior designer must still have the ability to discern which of those iterations are a quality solution. Designers are still responsible for knowing codes and standards and being able to deliver design solutions that meet them, so teaching students about codes and the iterative design process will likely always be relevant. She also noted that while AI may assist interior designers in our work, we are ultimately responsible for the work we produce. We must make sure that we listen and thoroughly research to create the programming process, synthesizing information thoughtfully to reach the best solution for our clients. This is insight I will certainly share with my students this fall.

My question to you (interior designers across the state of Alabama and educators at other universities in the state) is how are you using AI in your practice and/or classroom and if there is any advice you feel is particularly important to share with students. If you have software you are very enthusiastic about or have an informed perspective to provide regarding AI, I’d love to chat with you at the ASID Alabama IMPACT state conference in September about this topic. Even if you just have questions for other designers about how they are using AI in their practice, the conference would be a great time to get a group together and have a chat. I believe this is a fascinating time of transition with the growing capabilities of AI and we can all greatly benefit from shared conversations. Please feel free to reach out to me at kelly.martin@auburn.edu if you are interested in talking more.