From AI to sustainability: the modern designer’s survival guide

START OF TRANSCRIPT

Introduction: Welcome to the latest episode of Gowling WLG's Global Intellectual Property podcast where we discuss a range of topics to help you protect your brands, creations and inventions.

John Coldham: Hello everyone and welcome to this year's London Design Festival podcast. For about 15 years we have been recording this podcast to bring together some of the brightest minds from across the design and creative industries and this year is no exception.

Just a quick introduction for those of you who are less familiar with our firm in case you missed it when navigating to this podcast. We are the law firm Gowling WLG. We are a full-service law firm that helps clients with every possible commercial need, but we are particularly well-known for our intellectual property services. As part of this, we are widely considered to be one of the leading firms for design law in particular. This has led us to have a really longstanding relationship with the London Design Festival and these podcasts over the years have covered everything from 3D printing to IP infringement to multi-generational living.

As part of our involvement in the design sector, we produced a guide for designers many years ago that we have continually updated with new developments. This is available to download from our website, and I would recommend that you do. The page where you can find this and lots of our other resources including other podcasts from previous years' events and so on is www.gowlingwlg.com/designsforlife.

The question we are tackling today is a simple one to ask and a difficult one to answer. What does the future hold for designers? The pace of change in the design industry is extraordinary. Artificial Intelligence is transforming how we create, how we collaborate and increasingly how businesses decide what gets made in the first place. At the same time sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have.

Customers and regulators alike are demanding that brands take responsibility for their environmental and social impact and that is reshaping everything from supply chains to product lifecycles and sitting underneath all of this is a growing tension around intellectual property. Who owns what in a world where AI can create, sub-generate, remix and replicate creative work at scale? These are not abstract questions; they affect livelihoods, the business models and the creative freedom of everyone on this podcast and many of you listening.

We have four outstanding speakers who are going to help us unpack all of this from very different angles. So, let's get straight into it.

Geraint Edwards, hope I have pronounced that right, is our first speaker and needs no introduction not just because of his reputation. Geraint is the Chief Growth Officer at tangerine one of the UK's most respected design and creative consultancies and they have co-hosted this podcast series with us for the past 15 years. tangerine's portfolio speaks for itself spanning aviation interiors for British Airways and many others to the visitor experience at the Grand Egyptian Museum and Future Mobility Concepts. Geraint sits at the intersection of design strategy and business growth, so he is ideally placed to open our conversation about how organisations are navigating the opportunities and risks that come with rapid change.

Moving to our second speaker Rich Cahill we are shifting from the strategy to the sharp end of making things. Rich Cahill describes himself as a Product Designer and Engineer working at the Intersection of Human Centric Design and Emerging Technologies. He also says he struggles to describe himself in the third person so I will help him out. Rich has previously worked as a Design Engineer at Lovable and he is joining terrible* now as the Chief Revenue Officer. Rich brings a hands-on perspective on how technology is changing what designers actually do day-to-day and what it means for the craft of engineering, creating ideas into reality.

Frankie Hewitson started her career as a fashion designer before founding The Frank Co. Where she now leads on ESG and sustainability strategy for fashion brands. Her team has built the chain an AI-powered supply chain platform developed in partnership with the British Fashion Council that tracks wages, certification and feeds into digital product passports. They have also launched the only wage compliance tracking system of its kind built in partnership with Fair Trade. When you consider that an estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste is generated globally every year and the cost-cutting continues to squeeze garment workers' wages, the work that Frankie is doing couldn't be more urgent. The world of tech meets the world of sustainability.

And finally, Jack Haslehurst is someone who lives and breathes the collision of design and artificial intelligence every single day. Jack is the VP of design and experience at Cleo, an AI-powered fintech that is re-thinking how people interact with their money. Jack has led design teams of over a 100 people and created products used by tens of millions. At Cleo he works at the intersection of product design AI and finance overseeing everything from user research to conversation design. Jack is perfectly placed to round out our discussion by exploring what happens when AI is not a future threat but the product itself and what that means for designers for intellectual property and for creative ownership.

Hopefully that sums you all up.

John: There was a little bit of AI used to help with that intro so I will reveal my sources now but hopefully it hasn't overdone it. I think I said I would come to you first Geraint, so what are your first thoughts on the topic of the day?

Geraint Edwards: Well, it's quite a poignant topic and I think the way that businesses are adopting use of AI I think it's super intriguing. I think all of the reports we see about the lack of juniors coming into different businesses not just design firms but businesses globally I think is really worrying and I think we're seeing a shift in how that could change and seeing the positivity of how we can see that this next generation of designer and anyone working in any different business, how do you then justify bringing in a junior but I think there's the optimistic person in me that thinks they're going to be adopting those tools really early and I think there's the opportunity really.

John: Okay, great. Rich anything to add to that for just the scene setting of what is the future is for designers?

Rich Cahill: Yeah, for sure. So, you can get either AI do more about it or you can flip that and go from scarcity to abundance. So, we can either do more with less which means that couldn't do things before can do whatever they want. That's really what level we're after and a bunch of these other AI products we're going for. So, I see that as really being a blessing for us right now when things are bit gloomy that you can go a bit mad and do things you couldn't do before.

John: Okay. Frankie?

Frankie Hewitson: I agree with that and I think when it comes to giving you can do a lot more with the time you had before, so I think especially running a startup as a mum of two, I'm able to do a lot. When I first started the business, someone told me that you can never do it while growing a family and. But I can because I'm not working 5am in the morning until 10 o'clock at night but I'm working within that time with AI and that helps me and supports me. And then from a design perspective I think it also does. It helps a lot when it comes to reducing a lot of waste. Sampling for starters you can use AI to visualise what that clothing is going to look like on a model instead of having to produce multiple styles so that's a huge saving and for the cost of the things as well but those are my first thoughts.

John: So, saves on production as well of course.

Frankie: Yeah, definitely.

John: We will come back to that probably. Jack?

Jack Haslehurst: I think there's a big answer here and I think maybe two places that I'm seeing it in our day-to-day work is in the way that we go about designing now has changed a lot. So, thinking about faster prototyping and getting real products in front of users more quickly, a lot of the team are building their own tools for things like image generation tools built into our design tools or better ways to write copy or better ways to prompt our AI because that's core to our product and the other side for us is actually what that means for the product we're building. So going from traditional banking apps and things that to actually apps that could do things on a user's behalf before they have even asked on all the issues and potential questions with that how do you proactively stop someone going into their overdraft, it could be a future we make very soon or thinking about what an agentic product could look that's personalised for everybody and showing the right things at the right time of day so great side to actually both overhaul the product UX and overhaul the product process that we go to building stuff.

John: So, we have covered quite a lot of different opportunities there. One that I picked up with what you said Rich was that it has enabled a lot of people who couldn't do stuff before to do it now. I suppose that cuts both ways. Does it undermine, in your view, people who have actually developed the craft and got the skills - because now just anybody can do it or is it not quite as simple as that?

Rich: Oh no we used to preach that everyone is a designer. As someone who went to design school, it was always a cagey conversation, if I'm honest, usually in the pub after a few beers.

John: It's universal that people say that the lawyers are not designers.

Rich: I don't know though.

John: They don't want us giving views on creative stuff.

Geraint: That was all around. When you're a kid. So able to share ideas and you're so proud to show your mum and dad and your grandparents your ideas and, then tuitions and the way we go through schooling, the way we go through university trains us out to be less creative in a way and not being. And as to Rich's point and what I used to say a lot is we're all designers when we're children we all love creating but that gets bred out of us because of the way that we're taught, the way that social norms as sharing you get embarrassed sharing your good ideas.

How can we bring that back and I wonder whether these different tools, it does not have to be an AI tool, it could be a lot of different tools to help your confidence in that to maintain it or to bring it back. I am not a great writer. One thing that AI does for me is help me choreograph a better story when I am writing text and I think that it is where it has a positive effect on all of us as designers as people is that you can use it to make what you are not particularly strong at better.

Jack: I'm seeing it raising the floor on everything I couldn't really cope with before. I never really opened GitHub, now I've got GitHub open a lot of the time and I'm shipping code and building things because I just had to ask the AI to do it for me but the engineers that we have are still, their ceiling is still there for them to keep on going and do amazing things and build and actually waste less time. Or how to spend less of their time maybe doing some of the basic stuff that a lot more of my team can do and actually then pushing what the ceiling, so I'm seeing people raise the floor, but the ceiling is still open to be raised more by people.

Frankie: When you mentioned wasting time, I think that's also because you can trial multiple ideas at the same time. You can see what it looks like and play around with 'oh I've got this idea let us just see if this works' and within 10 – 15 minutes you can see if it does work or not and instead you would have to spend weeks researching and looking at that idea yourself and you can just trial it with AI and that's the bit that I find quite fascinating is you can practice and you argue with it. I often argue with AI, but it can fire ideas at you, and you can get things much better and at a point much quicker.

Rich: As certain digital things get commodified and it's easier and easier to build digital things I think things in the physical realm become more valuable and are crafted in the physical realm which is what we're doing at terrible* as we're using artifacts. Vinyl could be seen as action figures, they will connect fans to musicians and there's always an additional platform element of that I'm using as an enabler rather than something that replaces creativity. But if we think about what happened with vinyl when we got Spotify and streaming platforms and YouTube vinyl went through the roof because it was something other people couldn't get and it meant really connecting to the artist.

John: It's true. Also, a lot of people talk about AI but it's on one level it's just another form of tech. Tech evolution. If you look at even before the AI wave being a lawyer was still dramatically different to what it was 20 years previously because all the textbooks we used for something were suddenly online so you could just word search them rather than having to look through the index and spend half a day. A lot of the stuff is not. AI is the next step in that journey but it's not entirely a revolution from us all using crayons before.

Rich: I contest that.

John: You're going to contest that? But we weren't just using crayons before.

Rich: No, I use crayons every day. We have always spoke about the internet in I think in the 90s, talking about it as an alien force. The internet was a taste of what we have today. We now have entities that seem to be intelligent and you change them together in certain ways created as the then actually really are absolutely smarter than most people I know including myself so at the end of the day we have something which is completely alien, completely strange and that's why we have people. That's why my aunt text me 'are we all gonna die' and I said 'no we're going to be fine' it's we will all get boats and sail out to sea.

Frankie: Get a bunker.

Jack: Get a bunker.

Rich: That's why I drive a Land Rover Defender.

Geraint: To your point, John, it's very interesting hearing off from you all as you work with it more than I do but I do see it as the latest tool, but what would it be next in 10/15 years' time? Is it how AI evolves or is there something completely different? And I think that's what we're looking at: Is when we do bring in at the point I mentioned at the beginning when around the young designers coming adopting new tools is such a key part to bring into businesses, I think that's a very important thing to enable and keep bringing them in.

John: And I think that's important there are a lot of parents around this table and also a lot of parents will potentially listen to this podcast wondering what they should recommend their kids do because they wonder whether the jobs, it's the first time I think in my career where I've been conscious that there may be some careers that are coming to an end because they will be entirely replaced by AI. I'm not going to start naming any of them here to alienate the audience, but you can think of ones where things were done before.

But that has always been the case. We used to have a fax room here and their job was to send faxes and we got rid of it a while ago even as a law firm, held onto it for longer than some. There are always going to be changes to how organisations are structured and how many juniors you need or how many support staff you need or however many different tools you need because some of them will be replaced by computers but then some of them will create new opportunities as you have said so the junior that can come along who can power AI in a way that older people cannot is going to bring a step change.

Frankie: When I wanted to be in fashion, I thought there were certain jobs you could do and I went to university to learn about it. It was fashion design and business but that was everything. But even then the job that I've got now was not in that option. I trained to be a fashion designer I don't think I was actually very good but that does set me on a track to where I'm now focused into the supply chains and stuff but I think you don't know what those jobs are going to be and how it's going to be affected and how quickly it's going to move.

That is the bit that I feel quite excited about, and the impact fashion has had on me. A lot of fashion is ignored; we have this idea of what fashion looks like on Fashion Week and all the glamourous side of it and the actual reality of fashion is kept hidden and it gets forgotten. It is not interesting, it is not like the first time I saw a sweat shop that was an absolute shocker to me and most people in fashion have never seen a sweat shop and they have been working in it for 20/30/40 years and they have never seen how garments are made. And how can technologies make that better and we have already seen a massive impact we track factories. We use satellites to analyse how hot that factory is and what that is doing to workers and that is just some of the intelligence that we have on our platform and that is what we can and we can track all of that in real time when there is extreme runs of production how that affects the wages, how that affects the environment that the workers are working in, the water around the factory and how that impacts the local communities, that is all done in that moment of time and that is something you can never imagine before but we can actually use that to make fashion better so the buyers who are making those buying decisions of which garments and colours to choose can have that information to start off with before they have pressed the button on ordering. So, I am quite excited to see how tech can actually make and how AI particularly can make fashion a better industry, a much nicer industry.

John: So, to solve problems that we never thought you could solve that easily?

Frankie: Yeah. And problems that were simply too uncomfortable to sit with human rights, wages, understanding that most garments that we wear means that workers are paid below a minimum wage; that's an uncomfortable reality that people don't want to sit with very long but can we solve that problem quite quickly and it's an easier solution than we actually all think.

Rich: So, a lot of it even comes down to material choices as well that we make as designers. If you're printing use a cheap guild in a shirt the gases that are kicked up in the factory are very toxic. We will talk after. But it all really depends on the amount of decisions that you make upstream that then affect people downstream and making sure that you're able to understand that full loop. But making sure that the choices that we make as designers are the ones that mean that the ethical practices are actually enforced and used in the production line.

John: And that's part of what we're talking about today is how this is now more of an expectation than it was before. I think before this was always an option to go down the more sustainable route but now it's becoming more of an expectation, not with every company. But there's almost a split now you're either in the more responsible more sustainable side of design or you're on the as cheaply as it can possibly be and you will turn a blind eye to the realities of how that's being made and I'm seeing that with some of the brands.

We do a lot of enforcement work, and it tends to be against the second group but you are seeing that and there are some consumers who embrace the lack of care in the supply chain and just do not give two hoots about it. But then you have got people now who are getting increased expectations of it. I am going to be paying more than nothing for my clothes or for my products then I expect you to be responsible and I think from my view the people who are going to get caught out are the ones who are charging the higher prices but do not have the values to match and I think those are the ones who probably need the most guidance and help from people like you, Frankie, because they are the ones who the consumers always thought they were being responsible but if they are not then that is going to be more of an issue than some of them. Although I am trying not name any brands here but some of them who nobody ever thought they were being responsible and how you deal with those is a separate question and I am not saying it is right.

Frankie: Yeah. But. And I suppose customers have with AI just every day daily use of AI they can find out this about brands much easier. It doesn't take a lot to ask AI how much I should be paying for this garment roughly, based on x, y and z what does that look like, and instantly they will get feedback it can't be 'oh I didn't know this brand was really bad' don't worry I won't name names of the brands that are bad.

John: But I suppose that's right so it's not only an increased desire for a thing to be more responsibly sourced but also an increased ability to check it out for yourself so bringing it back to the topic. So, if you're designer/upstream as Rich said what do you do now or that maybe you guys know that I've always been super responsible. What do designers do now that they didn't do before? Is it now part of the design process that you just have to use software like Frankie's, or something to check out what was going on downstream before specify a particular type of material that's perhaps less good for the environment or worse for the workers or whatever is there. Get it from your perspective when you're designing for you tend to design for clients who come in and want your help. Have they changed the way they're briefing you? Is it different from that perspective?

Geraint: Yes, the ambition is what is very important with the clients and yes at tangerine we work with very large airlines and have a negative effect on climate emissions but the detailing that we go into goes into the lightweighting aircraft. Are you using sustainable materials, lightweighting means less fuel burn and those. And I remember back 15 years ago, when we're designing stuff that you might not think is circular we were always as industrial designers thinking about well how do you make it the thinnest, the lightest, easiest to disassemble to not to form it into something that can't be broken back down to its original materials.

However, to some of the points that have been covered already it does really come down to the responsible client. Unfortunately, there are pressures on the design economy at the moment. People will be asking not particularly for tangerine but there will be design facilities out there that will just be designing stuff that we know will go straight into landfill, but that ambition needs to come from the client. It may mean though you are not meeting the margins that you might not be able to get if you were not trying to hit those targets but I think that ambition is key.

John: And do you think the designers are more alive to the choices that they have? So, they might be instructed to make something cheap and susceptible for landfill but are they more alive to the fact that they have to be more aware of the impacts of the material choices and things than perhaps they were?

Geraint: Absolutely. And it has been taught more in universities. I think when we were in the late 90s early 2000s when I was going through industrial design, there was this thing was called green design and then sustainable design came in and now as Rich and the team here have talked about and howm everything evolves and I think that's key again a repeat of what I said earlier as a young designer if you have got the toolkit that you need coming out it's about adopting those new technologies, the new ways of working, it's not all going to be AI, it's not all going to be the next technologies, it's not going to be about how you can be more of a conscious designer. It's how you can work well with other disciplines. Other broader teams not just other designers and that's a key part of the how you can get jobs and the future of how people should collaborate because more collaboration can only mean better design and better products that hopefully will be more sustainable and better for the world.

John: And then Jack you're looking at this from also the other end of the telescope aren't you, so this is talking about the ingredients to go into doing things more sustainably using AI to help with the design stage. You're doing that but you're doing it with particularly to giving the users more ability to almost tailor their own experience?

Jack: I'm not working close to the sustainability with the physical product but I guess we're building a financial assistant that when you connect all your bank accounts we can then give you much deeper analysis and insight into your spending patterns. We can help you plan, we can help you build emergency funds, build saving pots, help you save on things. So it's more a powerful tool that can help you as an individual get better on the financial lifestyle, that's a first thing for us because we have so much opportunity to think about.

If you have an agent, imagine an agent is an assistant and it could do anything for you, what would a product be and it is very different to how you used to design stuff so as I say it could do stuff proactively for you. It can personalise a product for you, it might be able to find a bunch of Netflix accounts you might not realise you have and help you sort it down to one. So, quite a big potential but it is a very different physical world it is a totally digital world and utilising all that stuff for us.

John: But it's allowing the consumers almost to use their AI themselves but in a more tailored way than just going onto one of the mainstreams.

Jack: We talk to a lot of users and I think the idea digital products have evolved so much. A few years ago, the idea of using a chatbot for people was a real painful thing to do because it was when you had to go into an app and get customer support and now that has become the biggest interface for AI. You go and then hear a blank chatbot and you have got to try and enter your prompt. I think that a lot of the stuff that we're doing at the moment is how can you re-think that idea of just a blank chatbot and I'm sure there are lots of stuff actually level thinking about that so that you can actually say 'can we build a UI around you, prompts to tap on or visualising things as well as a conversation' and that can become much more powerful interface than interaction.

John: I think the problem with chatbots was the humans on the other end. You were doing about 20 of them at once and you had to wait whereas now presumably the AI is instant.

Jack: It was really slow. Let's say I'm going to try to get a $1,000 loan today to have to ask a chatbot for that versus tapping buttons it's a bit of a slower process and then they say, 'when are you going to pay it back' and typing in 'November 9th 2025' oh no wait backspace '2026' it's quite a slow process. So having to do those things through chatbot is a bigger pain, so we're trying to design around that to still have conversations but build the UI in front is quite exciting.

Rich: I speak to some of that. Did you guys have the first iPhone in 2006? When the apps were released that was a couple of years later, there was an app which was a beer drink.

John: A beer glass.

Rich: Oh my god that was amazing. That's where we're now because right now it's a toy and it's still evolving into a tool which is a natural progression. It's almost the same with Figma, debatably early Claude and early GPT. They were toys, things that were 'oh dance with me'. Whereas now they are things that you start to manage your life with.

Saying that I do not think the speech functions are better. I will be driving and I will be chatting to Claude and be planning a trip and it will be able to book things, so that is a bit easier. But when I was working a few years ago we were doing some design consulting for a large tech company that makes products that we all probably use every day and we did a lot of research around single use interfaces. The idea is that you have a plastic fork, yes really bad for the environment, yes you use lots of oil and water etc. to make. It weighs out the same as AI tools today, but we talked about single use interface the idea that an interface might be popped up for a certain journey you might be going on so let us say you are booking a surf trip or something like this that is something I currently do.

John: Does it all the time.

Rich: All the time. So, you may be don't want a chatbot for that, maybe you want a map, maybe you want a calendar, maybe you want a share calendar where you can see different cursors moving around at the same time. The idea is that you can pop up those interfaces, they're disposable, they're ephemeral and then you get through your journey, and they go away and we start to see experiments in that through some of the different labs the interaction design, lab of San Francisco. I can't remember what they're called. Company of California have some interesting things around this as well so that's why the hypothesis of where that's starting to go and I can't speak to where the levels on that are at all but I know there's definitely explorations from most companies in this direction.

Jack: We have been doing a bit of that, giving AI a design system and saying generate whatever it's the best interface for its action. That would vary a lot for trying to pay down a mortgage and what is the advantage of doing that versus getting a loan versus booking a surf trip where you might want to see the wind direction on the beaches. You can put it in the device and it literally generates UI for you so then you tap buttons rather than type and that's actually very exciting.

Moving away from apps as we imagine them today we are all used to YouTube showing you very different content. Maybe Rich has got surf content, maybe gets lots of car content but they are unique for you and it is the algorithm that has built those apps for you. There is a similar idea with some of the stuff that we are building you might build finance apps uniquely for the different users by generating UI for them.

John: It's interesting it comes back to a bit I was saying before about there's the emphasis on whether the designer, we're talking about the designer here and designer directing to people 'you want this' 'I will make this for you' 'you will buy it' be that fashion be it an app but it's whatever it's to actually both you and Frankie have both talked about almost the user. The power going to the user, so the user decides what it wants and it almost the tech created.

So you have talked about it in the context of the app doing what they want it to do rather than what the bank says they shall do with it. Frankie, you have talked about then being able to research the supply chain, you do not need to wait for the next sustainability report off of god-knows-who which may or may not be true. They can go and do it themselves and they can presumably it will not be far until there is an app that they can use, or they may not even need an app to do where they can craft it. And Rich, you were talking about how you could plan an entire thing using Claude.

So, you do not need to go by a travel agent's app anymore, you do not need to go to any of the mainstream providers because it is all circumvented by just using the tech directly. So does that mean that there are not going to be roles for designers in quite the same way. There is at the moment while they create these, windows, but once the window has been created and they can easily jump through it themselves do you need the designers anymore?

Frankie: Yes, but now they have got more information than before. We're talking at the moment with some designers of the brands that we work with and they're asking us 'okay how do I make this product more sustainable' and what. Sorry to say what they asked us before was 'how to make this product more sustainable 'what factory should I place it with' now our platform does that for them they just ask the platform, 'which factory is my highest risk' 'what fabric' and they can also find out okay what fabric. They said to me 'oh we have reduced our polyester by x, y, z per cent'. I can ask the platform and I can tell them 'no they haven't it was up 47% and why' 'oh it's because you use this factory and the factory hasn't got the certifications that they're supposed to have to use a certain polyester' that information is all there ready.

So now the designer before could say 'well I could not do it because of this reason, and it was after the fact that I found out' but now they can.

They know that information right now so actually designers have the tools to be more sustainable without actually having to be more sustainable. They have got that information ready at their fingertips to make that decision much quicker and also cost-cutting as well. And I do not want to say cost-cutting because I do not like the idea of negotiating tables with fashion brands, but you can see already the impact that that would have. So if you are saying 'okay this is going to be my wholesale price' 'this is what I am going to retail it at' 'this is the fabric that I am going to pick' you can see quite quickly okay is the worker going to get paid enough and you can see that number there and I think it makes the designers better because they have got all that information they can see and make better decisions quicker.

Geraint: I just want to piggyback when Rich said about the vinyl and Spotify and the role of tangible and people going forward, I think is very interesting to discuss because I think AI and all the different chatbots and tools are fantastic, they make things very efficient and you can do it in your own time but the longing to have human interaction and all that tangibility still comes.

When we did the work with the Egyptian Museum, we were not so much looking at how technology can make things more efficient. There are places where you can buy tickets using the digital interface, but we were plugging in certain people, people roles, we were designing roles so when you walk through the museum you interact and bump into people.

And I think as AI and different tech platforms that we all use keeps on progressing and making things spectacular and easy to use or intuitive to use, the positive side for me is that we are also going to be designing for more human interaction. I think that is a really exciting and quite beautiful thing and it will not just be clumsy people, it is going to be people that are really on point and you are going to have a wonderful interaction winner.

Rich: My degree was interaction design. For most people that really meant interacting with computers. But over time and I think through wearing the title as well of interaction designer ideally, it's really designing attractions between people, things, places, scenarios, objects and then at the end of that sometimes the digital directions but ultimately it's about enhancing human connectivity rather than replacing that.

There is a designer in New York that I really like, his name is Frank Chimero, he is an architect by training where he knows everything, he has a book called The Shape of Design. And the privy to that is that designers like Jazz and creations like Jazz you have two candles maybe I say something and that lights my candle and then someone else says and lights their candle off mine and then the light in the room is brighter.

Frankie: Oh, that's so nice.

John: That's good.

Rich: There we go. Yeah. We could go down that rabbit hole.

Geraint: I think your interaction point is a great point is that. We did it so many times back in the day the idea is multiple touch points in which you interact with. I had a funny/sad moment last week with an AI bot with a large telecom company. I got an email confirming that I had just signed up to a new 36-month contract and I thought hang on, I don't want to be signing up for that. They said yeah Mr blah had signed up. It was my father who passed away 18 months ago and so I was chatting to this bot telling it that person they just confirmed had died 18 months ago and I could see when you see the little dots it's thinking and it's thinking. What do I do here? And then immediately the person jumped on the chat.

They said, 'would you to file a complaint sir' and I was in a way 'yes' but I'm sure it's just a problem that something has automatically happened, but again I'm not promoting that going into banks and that whole interaction with people of course not. Technology has got to evolve but the role of human interaction across stuff if we don't really understand yet is going to grow and I think that comes back to the way that we hire designers as well.

We expected designers to adopt all these new tools but if they can't sit in a room with us and collaborate and be fun who you work with and be very passionate about. Whatever you want to be passionate about. You don't have to be 'like me' I want to be able to have a really dynamic conversation with you and I think that's a really key skill that we look for, for fresh grads coming out is that you can adopt all those tools but you're also very interesting in array of different ways.

Frankie: And you have to learn as well, and you have the skill. One thing in design is yes, an AI or a tool can tell you this is how you can reduce the waste of this garment but really you're going to have to know how to cut fabric, you're going to need to know how to pattern cut yourself and you need to, as a designer, you need to know how to make clothing.

One to have the appreciation of the people actually making and actually understanding how long it takes and having that respect there but also to know if you're going to cut a garment and you're going to use a computer to do it which is a used tech for years in fashion to reduce waste but that's getting better and better you still need to know how to pattern cut yourself. You still need to know how to grade and to make that design from a flat piece of paper to seeing it on a human and lots of designers are using tools to make it to visualise.

I said before, about visualising a design on a person makes it a lot easier for the brands to buy it because instead of sampling 100 garments across and some factories they pay the factories as well are paying for the sampling, the brand does not. So, the factory pays the sampling the brand will probably sample with so many different factories and then only one of them is going to get the order and that is a cost that the factories have to carry and if they do not get the order and that cost has to go somewhere it goes on margins. So that to me I am quite excited about because of instead of spending it is not just the waste of the garments and the fabric and the time it is also the impact that it has on the factory and so that is what I am quite excited about but until the designer knows how to make a garment themselves they do not know how to actually design one and that is the only bit that I am. I still want to make sure that people do that grafting, that early exploring and developing themselves and not just doing everything on a screen drawing and physically cutting and physically making.

John: That's a good point.

Frankie:It's so important.

John: Good point. Now Jack, you made a point in contrast. You're suggesting that humans are not really required anymore for a good experience, is that unfair?

Jack: Well in our company for the designers I think we still really need great designers so the people that are making these are definitely we're hiring designers, we're hiring people that can use these as tools and can work with them as part of their process or amend their process but being a really well trained designer understands the fundamentals of good design and what that means it's something I think is really important because often when we see AI generating a screen and it still can do that pretty well now it's going to converge on the meaning of an average screen. This is an average thing and it's okay. I need people to actually make stuff that's much better than that and make great work and augment that and work that in really interesting way so the people that we're hiring and working with from a design perspective are super important in terms of taking things, thinking more creatively and being great curators and AI can generate loads of stuff but you need to create what is the best from that and build on it.

John: So, to Rich's point, it's raising the floor but it's not.

Jack: Yeah.

John: There's still room at the top.

Jack: So much room at the top. And I guess that for our product it's I suppose it's 'are we competing with financial advisors' most people probably wouldn't be able to afford financial advisors especially followed by users that we're going after in America, we're a key market in the US so I guess it's providing something to people that they were not able to afford before that's going to be more personalised in growth and to learn about them in a more cost-effective way so that's quite exciting I think for us.

John: Well of the things that I do as part of my job is I lead our retail and consumer sector and it's interesting to see what is happening in the retail sector so the other end of your journey. Frankie, in terms of the supply chain, it ends up in the hands of consumers and how people buy that stuff it's quite interesting.

The death of the high street has been foretold many times, but it is still there. It is changing but it is still there, Covid was a great opportunity for all of the shops in theory to shut their doors because everybody suddenly even the doubters were using online shopping, so we have got to ask ourselves why are they still going to shops?

Jack: A lot of them are not.

Geraint: It's the experience, right.

John: But it's still the experience. Exactly.

John: And it's and to your point Geraint, it's for the human experience.

Frankie: Yes.

John: And it's interesting from my perspective that the retailers who are doing well at the moment are the ones who are multichannel. If you're just online or you're just stores as in bricks and mortar stores they're doing, as a rule generally less well.

The ones that are doing well are the ones that have got the multiple touchpoint. So, if you want the convenience, you want the 'it will arrive tomorrow because I order it tonight' it arrives and it does it and that serves that need but there are some people who literally want to go and try it on, they want to see it or they need it today and they even don't want to risk same day delivery they just want to go to a shop and pick it up and go home with it.

I needed some goggles for my son and I needed them at 8pm at night because he had suddenly announced he had a swimming lesson the following morning and so I went to our local leisure centre and went and browsed them. I could ask the person what the difference was rather than having to even using AI to figure out what the difference was between these countless pairs of goggles that all look they were doing exactly the same thing but had bizarrely different prices and its things that. AI might be able to help me do the research but at the end of the day my son is going to look at these goggles and say, 'I don't like them.'

The shops that are doing well are the ones that are creating more of an experience in store. They might be putting a cinema in the basement. But they might also, I think although we're not naming any names, I think it's probably fair to comment on Selfridges who have reinvented what a department store could look like. Instead of being combing the internet it's effectively a department store so why do you need a real department store. Well, the experience you have in Selfridges, it's expensive, but the experience is there. They have got that incredible Jellycat thing. I don't know if you've seen it where they have created a fish and chip van which is entirely, it's an experience. It's an experience, it's an incredibly expensive experience and I think if you time it badly it can take two hours to queue for your experience to buy some very, very expensive Jellycat fish and chips.

Geraint: Have you seen the Yo-Chi launch in London?

John: No.

Geraint: It's frozen yogurt and it's amazingly good quality from Australia. I've cycled past it in Notting Hill Gate every day. There must be 100 different toppings and it's just the queue must be 200 people constantly outside.

Geraint: People love it and its good quality and I think it's intriguing marketing around it as well.

Frankie: Chances are they just pay people to queue there.

Geraint: Queues breed queues.

Frankie: Yes, because people do love a queue. Yes.

John: But I think that's right, but I think it's partly about being the momentary and sensation. But I think Jellycat to this example, born on really good quality, high quality, really popular through, they do a good job, the designers are doing a good job. I imagine they have got real designers thinking what is the next cute thing to make and then how can we sell it in an experiential way and that's why the fish and chips works so well.

Frankie: Yes.

Geraint: The one thing we've got is Boomers, Gen X and the Millennials all have been brought up with shops and experiences. And now we're probably, especially Millennials are very much a hybrid of going to go to shops and being things online. I see my little girl interact with technology which can be amazing but can also be funny. She is 7 and will be in my old car and she will say 'hey Google' because she thinks the radio is a voice command and, the reason I can add is well, fast forward 20 years time, what will Gen Alpha and the next generation after that be looking for in terms of experiences and that's just intriguing to think about.

Rich: I'm debatably Gen Z. I might have the deepest voice for it. But '93, I think that's the cut-off. I found myself the other day trying to zoom in on a photo, a physical photo that, and it was horrible. And I caught myself and I was 'oh my God'. So, it can happen to you.

John: It's the kids that, they grow up with iPads and they touch the TV because they think the TV will respond in the same way. Well, some do, ours doesn't.

Frankie: But it's going to be, and you want that experience. Selfridges is a really good example, because one of the brands that we work with at Rat and Boa they're in Selfridges, they're an online brand but they created an experience in Selfridges and that whole experience is that people can go in and try on their clothes and they could feel the fabric and they can feel how it fits on them and then they have got new customers then that they didn't have before and that's one of the things that's important. And I think it's so important and I went shopping for a suit the other day and I'm not going to buy a suit online especially when it costs that much, I go in and I actually feel what that fabric feels like and have someone talk to me about how it was made and the fit and what fabrics I should look at and things that. You want that interaction; you want someone to tell you what you should be getting.

John: Some people don't.

Frankie: Some people don't care.

John: Some people don't want to talk to people.

Frankie: True.

John: So, if you look at the generations going back generations, the older generations are fine on the phone, they will pick up the phone and talk to people and they talking to people. And then you go through the generations, and I feel I'm at the pivot because I like talking on the phone but my wife genuinely hates talking on the phone. And it's an excuse; you don't need to anymore.

You used to have to just train yourself even if you're bit nervous about phoning somebody up, you just had to and eventually you just became a grown up and you did it. But now you don't have to because you have got chatbots and I would love to see the stats actually on what experience consumers prefer.

Because you will probably find it's generationally split. I found the chatbots annoying because they take forever whereas you can just have a quick phone call and somebody just gets it and answers it. But I suppose if the chatbots get better, then that comes back to design again, you design it in a way that deals with the concerns people have got about a particular way of experiencing.

Rich: My friend was one of the first employees of PolyAI which is an answering machine type thing but using AI. Incredibly convincing. And I was getting a haircut, and I rang up and it took me about 20 seconds to realise that it was an AI that I was speaking to. I think we're starting to cross that uncanny valley. Sometimes we slide back down into that uncanny valley for anyone who doesn't know it's, loet's say cartoon on one side and you have got super hyper-realistic on the right and anything in between that seems slightly off in appearance, falls into the uncanny valley and we get disgusted about it, something is sick or something is off.

An evolutionary thing. But I was blown away and there was even chatter in the background and everything and they were talking to each other with names and stuff and 'oh where are you going on holiday' and I thought what was going on. So yes, by the way I love phone calls as well. I wrote my phone number on the back of my car when I drive on a long road trip, just an ad hoc broadcast.

John: So, bringing us back to what, sorry we have gone on a bit of a tangent, but it's all very interesting in terms of, all of this comes back to design which is, I suppose you have got to design for so many different people. No one size fits all, it never has, but almost increasingly now, but the question is whether the design is to try and be all things to all people or if you were a designer now, if you were giving tips to a younger designer these days, what would you advise them to do. Do you focus on a particular niche, do you try and keep yourself broad, do you embrace the technology or try and just be one step ahead of it. What tips would you have for designers. It doesn't have to be younger designers, any designers.

Geraint: For me it hasn't changed. Even though technology changes, it hasn't changed. It's for me three things. Even when I graduated 20 years ago and I was sure it would be the same for someone who graduated 20 years before that, adopting the latest tools. That hasn't changed.

40 years ago it was probably a lathe, 20 years ago it was CAD and now it's probably AI tools but it's adopting the right tools. I personally think secondly that it's about that if you want to fit into a business and work with people, that personability, the being "likeable" is one word but just being passionate about working with people and being collaborative is key. And then my third one is just energetic. That having for myself for example having a young family and coming into the studio and seeing young designers passionate, using the tools and being energetic is what every design company I've ever seen or client I've worked with, driving needs or drives the bottom-up approach to the design culture.

Jack: I do I would agree with all that. I think building on it maybe some of the things I look for is maybe we would describe as high agency, people that are up for finding problems and solving them and just getting stuff sorted without asking permission or waiting to be told what to do. Especially in a company like ours, we have an experience team which is design and research and conversation content design that people that can see problems, solve them, come up with new ideas, share them, not waiting to be told what to do is super important. And then also, I would like, yes, building on Ger's idea of adopting new tools. It's moving really quickly. Some of the stuff that I'm seeing is what you would call organically growing from the team below us right.

It's not me saying, 'we're going to use a new tool for us building and sharing prototypes' right. It's the way that maybe one designer has just discovered a new tool and then shares it with me and I'm, 'how did you make this', and they say, 'well I wanted an engineer to build this really cool prototyping tool' and I'm you should systemise this and get the whole team onto it. So that's awesome, adopting new tools, playing around with it and sharing it for the whole team.

Yes, for me it's just super exciting because there's always something new every week and I do feel like sometimes I'm back at school and learning stuff. But again, for the first time and it's great, exciting. Every day is a school day.

Frankie: It's a topic both of you said, a lot of important stuff and I suppose the big thing would be not to use it to replace experiences. I think one of the things is we're seeing already is some design teams that we work with who now, because they have these different tools, they're not drawing by hand, they're not going to visit factories, they're not going to visit fabric mills, they're instead just send over, what fabric should I be using and sending that brief over to the factories or the mills or what have you and actually going there and seeing, that has the biggest. Also, that's where you get your inspiration from but then using those tools to make you better. But it's not replacing that lived experience because I think that's important.

John: Very good. Rich, tips for the younger you?

Rich: Yes. Capture your work. Please do that, I didn't do that. Still make sure you capture your work.

Frankie: We're talking about also IP.

John: We can talk about IP, sure.

Rich: Capture your work. You can't copy creativity. Curiosity doesn't kill the cat. And VCs absolutely love designers. So we were talking about abundance earlier, we're going to see more and more design founded companies because designers are just going to get it, the curiosity, I would say rub your hands and just making stuff constantly because it seems a fidget, pretty much everyone I know and works in design has ADHD in some capacity or another, or is a little bit neuro spicy shall we say, so just follow your nose and go after things and don't worry, don't chase money, chase things that you want to do.

I was given a piece of advice when I graduated university which is three things and only take a job that has at least two, so you are going tonnes, you are going to make loads of money or you are going to have loads of fun and I am fortunate enough that most of my roles through my years have had all three, which has been really cool, well maybe not the make loads of money part, but we have had a couple of crack with that, we fought over those, my name's Rich so it is ok.

John: Good tips, better tips, yeah.

Geraint: One other thing I'd add I think to your points was and it's a luxury but I think the world of travelling and seeing cultures, and being openminded, I think both Frankie and Jack I would, like, not being closed off and I think having experts is great but I think what a great tool for a young designer, junior designer is to be open minded and passionate about the right things in a way that you're not closed off. I think as global travel becomes easier I think that, if you can travel and experience as much as you can, different cultures, just getting out there, I love going to any place in the world and going to the supermarket, observing people and observing people is such a key skill because it brings back to the whole point of again that people element, it's it doesn't go away and if you're closed off to that inspiration of people and not openminded it's such a key skill for designers.

John: And that's great, bringing it back to the IP points so Rich, bringing it back to the IP point. You need new ideas don't you, you need new things because otherwise you're just recycling the same old stuff over and over again if you're not careful, so and that's one of the things people talk about with AI is whether it copies things and whether it does this that and the other and I'm sure it does, but if you're putting new ideas into the hopper as well, and using the AI to help you develop those ideas it's going to be very different and probably more innovative and therefore easier for you to keep your stamp on it and keep it protected for you, as long as you have recorded it Rich so it's definitely yours but bringing that new inspiration in is the way to do it. The danger of it's that become, not you guys, you guys are not doing this, but one can become lazy and if you're using AI to become lazy then it's not going to work as well, but if you're using it to enable you to enrich better ideas.

Geraint: On that capture thing, I remember when I immediately graduated I had a couple of interviews and some were really random interviews and I think that's a very important thing about young designers, just go to any interview, practice talking about your work.

John: Yes.

Geraint: Getting out of your university context or your, wherever you've educated and learnt and practice, just practice, practice, practice, every interview is a good chance to practice talking about your work. I remember one famous designer told me to learn Mandarin and move to China when I was 22.

Frankie: Did you do that?

Geraint: I didn't but all advice is good advice right? I took it in and realised what he was saying in that comment as I needed to be, malleable to be able to work with a culture that was manufacturing the majority of the products in the world at that time, 20 years ago.

Frankie: I used to live in Beijing and that was one of the bit's where I noticed, you see how things are made and it does give you a sense, just seeing how things are made anyway, but embedding yourself into a culture that you can't speak English in because you can't get anywhere, everyone I worked with spoke Mandarin, I couldn't get anywhere without speaking a little bit and I couldn't go shopping without speaking a little bit and it does force you to live completely, whereas in Hong Kong where I moved afterwards everyone spoke English so it changed the experience completely but when you live and travelling around China and seeing factories and travelling completely solo around, across, you see clothing and fashions but also you see the impact that it has and that's another story but I think that I'm quite, I think that if designers now can see those experiences and travel and see the impacts they can be much better designers and yes, protect your work, I didn't protect my work on one of the jobs either.

John: Protect your work.

Frankie: Protect your work.

Geraint: Protect your work.

John: Unless anybody has got any final comments that's probably quite a good place to wrap it up because.

Rich: Can I say one last thing?

John: Yes, go on Rich.

Rich: We talked a lot about, I know I talked a lot, we talked a lot about seniority in roles and that you gradually climb up ladders etc. Etc. And we all started as interns, of Hi De Ho many moons ago, but I remember back then we were talking about juniority which was fun and trying to celebrate the more junior you're the more like fresh the ideas are that you're bringing to the table and we have got Gen Z consultants coming in and all these things as well, it was just fun to bring in the freshness and make sure that there was energy in the room as Geraint mentioned and the curiosity and the drive as well as fresh perspective.

Geraint: But relaying what a boss has told you is not refreshing in a way, that's the thing we have got to be careful with AI, I get that, and I really talked about this earlier, was isn't it elevated, a lot of the people are just the same level because you can, as you were saying earlier, research a topic and suddenly you have got a bloody essay on a topic and you just wanted to ask one question.

20 years ago, to look up that you would have done it in a, with an encyclopaedia for example, something very tangible and not given you a fraction of the insight that you can get now. And that's, we just need to be careful around, you can get a lot information from these things and I think that also promotes, so I said earlier around being really insightful at the wrong time of a process, a design process, it sometimes makes you blinkered and you can't actually see where you're going because you think you're an expert too early in the process and the way that we always used to work in design was go and do that research be open minded listen to people the best skill of a designer is getting out there and listening and absorbing and then adopting those insights as your way of going forward and if you go in with having put into an AI platform what is the future of X Y and Z and then suddenly you have got 25 ideas and you haven't even started the project. It's maybe a great base but also scary that you're getting the answers too early.

John: Thank you everybody.

Geraint: The last thing I was meant to cover was the classic thing with design where you have you Richard said it earlier about the three things but different about being rich, is the AI what AI can do to the classic model and there's a lovely app I think where you have three toggles, you want it good, quick or cheap and you can toggle you can only have two so if you want it quick it's going to be expensive and…

John: Different quality.

Geraint: Exactly you sacrifice the quality. I think that again is a threat not a threat, but what AI can do is potentially leave all those three toggles on which is unrealistic going forward for unfortunately design firms survive because we can't do all three at the same time.

Frankie: That's a really good point.

John: But then the AI is not going to be free forever either.

Geraint: Well, somebody said earlier, it's nice to use now but suddenly we'll lose all our brain capacity.

Jack: And I don't think it's super high quality either.

Rich: Ooh interesting, we haven't even talked about the water crisis in Ireland because of the data centres.

Frankie: We haven't touched on the environmental impact and the unknown environmental impact.

John: We will have to have a sequel.

Frankie: And the human impact as well of people in the global south having the side effects of this as well.

John: This is the first podcast I have done for London Design Festival where we have struggled to keep it within the hour and we could do a sequel.

Frankie: The next one we talk about environmental.

John:Yes, watch this space for season two. Brilliant — thank you all very much.

Frankie:Look at Richard's notes.

Rich: No, they're not work.

John: They're doodles because he is a designer he is constantly doodling. Listen thank you very much to all of you for a really insightful discussion and hopefully some of the designers out there have been inspired to become designers or to do their jobs in different ways as a result of the advice you have given so thank you very much.

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