Making the Invisible Visible
We’re still figuring out what to call it - maybe experience science.”
That phrase has been echoing for me after attending a keynote during NYCxDESIGN week at IBM’s new office space at One Madison Avenue.
The keynote was actually a series of talks led by IBM’s design team, headed by Sadek Bazaraa, along with their agency partner, FIELD.IO.
While I already knew IBM was a leader in developing AI-powered digital products, the talks made it strikingly clear just how novel and complex the design challenges in this space are - especially when approached responsibly with the long term in mind.
One of the ways IBM tackles this is through design guilds: informal, designer-led groups that track emergent developments across relevant domains. These guilds help cultivate applicable expertise in areas ranging from integrating AI into familiar software experiences to product labeling. (That opening phrase about “experience science” relates to the idea of forming a new guild under that name.)
Another highlight was IBM’s partnership with Adobe, which appears to be a major focus for them. IBM is not only the world’s largest employer of digital product designers - through its in-house IBM Blue Studio and agency partner FIELD.IO - it’s also an industrial scale user of Adobe’s generative AI tool, Firefly. Firefly was built from the ground up for generative design and they shared some examples of how they are pushing boundaries including its new Structural Reference and Style Reference capabilities. In this context they spoke of human/machine symbiosis and pairing creativity (human) and capability (machine).
A final standout moment came from IBM’s Environments Team, who showcased how AI helped shape the design of their new workspace. For this, they commissioned artist Linda Dounia to create a piece titled Once Upon a Garden. (Pictured above.) Dounia began by researching extinct plants in herbarium collections - species lost due to human activities - and then used AI to revive them visually, first as individual plants, then in patterned arrangements. It is a poetic example of "making the invisible visible" - something that came up again and again during the talks.
You can learn more about IBM’s NYCxDESIGN keynote here.
A quick word on NYCxDESIGN itself: For those unfamiliar, it’s an annual citywide design festival that takes place each May. This year’s theme was Design is for Everyone. The festival features independently-hosted trade fairs (like ICFF), exhibitions, open studios, talks, and panel discussions across all five boroughs. It spans a broad spectrum of design disciplines - furniture, interior, graphic, fashion, entertainment, technology, architecture, and more.
More information is available here.
