Hardware Podcasts

How AI Is Transforming Product Design

It's Only a Prototype · 29 May 2025 · 53m

AI in practice: 4 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Industrial designer and AI consultant Rupert Warries joins hosts Tom Constable and Phil Staunton to discuss how generative AI is transforming product design workflows. Warries explains how tools like Vizcom and ComfyUI allow designers to accelerate ideation and 3D rendering while managing stakeholder expectations regarding the realism of AI outputs. The conversation covers the legal ambiguities of AI training data, the risk of over-reliance on AI as a 'crutch', and the future impact of AI on design roles and hiring practices.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

DesignVizcom

The designer uses Vizcom to input sketches and generate presentation-level imagery, speeding up the creation of visual concepts for stakeholder review.

“I'd recommend VisCom as the 1st one to jump into. essentially, at a very basic level, it's Photoshop. It's an online app that is essentially Photoshop with AI built into it in some ways. You can sketch directly into it. You can input images, that kind of thing, and then you can process what you sketch, what you've input into imagery, however style you describe, however you like.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 38:20

DesignComfyUI

The designer runs open-source AI models locally using ComfyUI to generate imagery and 3D interpretations of sketches without uploading confidential client data to external servers.

“I use Comfy UI. Various free open source business software. You can run these models on your home machine so long as you have admittedly quite powerful hardware. It's a bit of a barrier to enter to open source, which is a shame, but it is there.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 40:20

DesignMidjourney

The designer recommends Midjourney as a tool for pure image generation to spark creative thinking and generate inspiring, non-existent product imagery during the early ideation phase.

“For pure image generation. Midjourney is very good. ChatGPT 40's new model is, as we were saying earlier, incredibly good. There are other services available. To be honest, it's such a wide net right now that those are starting points, but for the net wide, depending on what you want to do.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 38:20

DesignChatGPT (LLM)

The designer uses ChatGPT to review drafted emails and concept stories, asking the model to identify blind spots and provide neutral, factual feedback to enhance critical thinking without emotional bias.

“I'm then using it to essentially bounce my ideas of saying, this is what I'm thinking. This is what I, this is how I intend to tell this story to sell this design to create this idea around your brand or something like that and say, well, where are my blind spots? Analyze what I've got here and tell me what I should be thinking about, what I might have missed.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 10:32

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
D2M Product Design Agency, XYZ Reality
Tools
Vizcom, ComfyUI, Midjourney, ChatGPT

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