This post also appears at www.designfictiondaily.com

This week I am going on a deep dive on how to come up with ideas and develop a concept, from start to finish, using various AI tools as studio assistant and lab partner.

This is not a definitive process on how to do all things AI. This is just the process that was used for this article. Like any creative assignment, techniques are going to change from project to project. What you are going to learn here is how to get inspired by, improvise and implement with artificial intelligence to power-up your work flow.

The following is a linear documentation of the process as I worked through today’s Design Fiction Daily submission.

The rest of this post is for paid my subscribers (thank you for your support).

Let’s get on with the show. Even though we’ll be using a few AI tools, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be doing all the work. In fact, you’re the one that’s going to have to put in the effort to get what you need from these tools.

When you don’t know where to start, start anywhere.

— Dré Labre

Sometime you just don’t have time for inspiration or ideas to come to you, so you need to go to them. In today’s case, I’m busting out the old-school1 Design Fiction Design Brief Creation Playing Cards. After a quick shuffle, I picked three cards from the deck and here’s what we got.

Our object is a CHAIR, its attribute is ART DECO ( this can be open to interpretation) and the design action is a wild card, so I grabbed the nearest book to me, opened it up and saw the word EXPLORE.

Let’s jump into chatGPT and craft a prompt that will turn this into something we can work with.

1st Attempt: The Initial Prompt

Me: I want you to come up with some futuristic concepts. I would like options that are near-future oriented more than far out sci-fi. They should be plausible. They should also be a little humorous or satirical.

I will offer some prompts for you to work from. The object in mind is a [chair]. It embodies [art deco] characteristics and its action is [explore], meaning that it performs this action, as a futuristic option. What it explores is up to you.

With the information I provided above, please come up with a list of futuristic art deco chairs that explore along with a brief description of what it is and how it works.

I talk to the AI in a conversational tone and tend to be polite, because who knows if being rude and barking orders at our potential future overlords is a good idea. Mind you some of what I express is clunky, but I believe chatGPT is pretty forgiving and can understand what’s being communicated even if it’s poorly written.

1st Attempt: ChatGPT’s Response

ChatGPT: Sure, I'd be happy to help! Here are some near-future oriented concepts for art deco chairs that explore:

1. The Teleportation Chair: This chair combines the art deco design with cutting-edge teleportation technology. The chair can transport the user to any location on Earth, allowing them to explore the world from the comfort of their own home.

2. The Time Travel Chair: Inspired by the art deco design of the 1920s, this chair takes the user on a journey through time. With the help of advanced technology, the chair can transport the user to any point in history, from ancient civilizations to the far-flung future.

3. The Multidimensional Chair: This chair explores the concept of multidimensional space. Using advanced quantum mechanics, the chair can transport the user to alternate dimensions and parallel universes, allowing them to explore the vast possibilities of reality.

4. The Virtual Reality Chair: This chair combines the art deco aesthetic with the latest in virtual reality technology. The user can explore immersive virtual worlds, experiencing everything from deep-sea diving to space exploration without leaving the comfort of the chair.

5. The Interstellar Chair: With the help of advanced propulsion technology, this chair can explore the vast reaches of space. Users can take a tour of the Milky Way, visit nearby stars, and even explore the depths of the universe, all from the comfort of this art deco-inspired chair.

6. The Time Capsule Chair: This chair doubles as a time capsule, allowing users to explore the future by preserving items from the present day. Users can add items to the chair, which will then be sealed away for a set amount of time before being opened again, giving a glimpse into the world of the future.

7. The Memory Lane Chair: This chair explores the concept of nostalgia by allowing users to revisit their favorite memories. Using advanced neural technology, the chair can recreate any memory with stunning accuracy, allowing users to relive their most cherished moments.

All of these chairs embody the art deco design and offer unique ways to explore the world and beyond, in a near-future plausible way.

It appears that it didn’t do exactly what I asked it to do. It went into a soft science fiction, fantasy world with time travel and multiverse concepts. I need it to lean into something more realistic.

Take note that chatGPT has a memory, so you don’t need to repeat yourself, you can just refer some something previously said in the conversation. The below is a continuation of our conversation.

2nd Attempt: Fine-tuning the request.

Good first attempt, but most of the ideas above are unrealistic. They are good sci-fi ideas. Can you try this again but stick to a more realistic possible near future?

I told it what it did wrong and how it can do it better next time. Clarifying my expectation. This is effectively supervised learning.

2nd Attempt: ChatGPT’s fine-tuned response.

Certainly, I apologize for the previous ideas being too far-fetched. Here are some more plausible concepts for futuristic art deco chairs that explore:

1. The Augmented Reality Chair: This chair incorporates augmented reality technology to create an immersive experience. Users can explore virtual environments that blend seamlessly with the real world, providing a new level of interactivity and engagement.

2. The Wellness Chair: This chair is designed to explore the connection between physical and mental well-being. It incorporates advanced sensors and monitoring technology to provide real-time feedback on the user's posture, heart rate, and other vital signs. The chair can also provide personalized wellness recommendations, such as exercises or stretches, based on the user's data.

3. The Smart Home Chair: This chair is part of a larger smart home ecosystem, allowing users to control their entire home from a single, comfortable location. The chair is equipped with voice-activated controls, allowing users to adjust lighting, temperature, and other settings without getting up.

4. The Interactive Learning Chair: This chair is designed to facilitate interactive learning experiences. Using advanced sensors and haptic feedback technology, the chair can provide users with a tactile learning experience. For example, a user could explore the geography of a foreign country by feeling the contours of a 3D map on the chair's surface.

5. The Ambient Entertainment Chair: This chair is designed to provide a fully immersive entertainment experience. It incorporates advanced sound and lighting technology to create an ambient environment that enhances the user's enjoyment of movies, TV shows, and video games.

6. The Smart Shopping Chair: This chair incorporates smart shopping technology, allowing users to explore and purchase products from the comfort of their own home. The chair is equipped with a built-in scanner that can identify products and provide information such as prices and reviews.

7. The Environmental Exploration Chair: This chair is designed to explore and educate users about the natural world. It incorporates advanced environmental sensors and data analysis tools to provide real-time information about the user's surroundings, such as air quality and temperature. The chair can also provide educational content on topics such as ecology and conservation.

These concepts are more grounded in near-future technology and explore a variety of different areas, from wellness to education to entertainment.

I love that it acknowledged the feedback I gave it and recognized that the first round of ideas was too far-fetched.

With the new batch of concepts, I feel like it aligned the answers to current or emerging trends and technology. All of the answers feel a little expected. Frankly, are downgrades of what currently exists. I need to fine tune this a little more.

3rd Attempt: Pushing it to be more innovative.

I like how you aligned these with current trends, but I feel like all of these ideas are a little too expected. If anything, some of them already exist. Here's what I'd like you to do. 

I want you to think of the first prompt I gave you and consider some humorous, tongue-in-cheek ideas that incorporate emerging technology and trends into a chair. They need to be unexpected. Think more like a conceptual artist. Consider the meaning as well as the functionality. What can you say about the world with these ideas. 

Please come up with a list of new ideas now.

I like to imagine that I’m talking to a junior creative team. I want to praise the effort and success off-the-top then get into some constructive feedback with well-considered direction.

3rd Attempt: ChatGPT’s more creative response.

Certainly, I understand your request. Here are some humorous and unexpected concepts for futuristic art deco chairs that explore:

1. The Social Media Chair: This chair incorporates social media technology to provide users with a new level of connectedness. The chair is equipped with a built-in screen that displays a live stream of the user's social media feeds. The chair also has a camera that can capture images and videos to be shared instantly.

2. The Selfie Chair: This chair is designed specifically for taking selfies. The chair has a built-in selfie stick and ring light, allowing users to take the perfect photo from the comfort of the chair.

3. The Mood Chair: This chair is designed to explore the user's emotions. It incorporates advanced mood detection technology that analyzes the user's facial expressions and body language to determine their emotional state. The chair then adjusts its color and lighting to match the user's mood.

4. The Virtual Assistant Chair: This chair is equipped with a built-in virtual assistant that can provide users with personalized recommendations and advice. The virtual assistant can also control other smart devices in the user's home, such as lighting and temperature controls.

5. The Plant Chair: This chair is designed to incorporate plant life into the user's living space. The chair has built-in planters that allow users to grow herbs and small plants right on the chair. The chair also has a built-in watering system to keep the plants healthy.

6. The Weather Chair: This chair incorporates advanced weather prediction technology to keep users informed about the weather conditions in their area. The chair can display real-time weather data and provide recommendations for how to prepare for changing weather conditions.

7. The Virtual Travel Chair: This chair allows users to explore the world without leaving their home. The chair is equipped with a virtual reality headset that can transport users to any location in the world. The chair also incorporates haptic feedback technology to provide a more immersive experience.

These concepts are designed to be tongue-in-cheek and incorporate emerging technology and trends in unexpected ways. They explore different aspects of modern living, from social media to emotional well-being to environmental consciousness.

I’m not terribly excited about these results. They are better than the previous attempt but it’s clear that it’s not going to come up with a banger concept in short order. This is where the human part of the equation comes in.

Of everything it produced, one idea stood-out as a seed for something I think might make a nice idea to develop into a design fiction post.

The Plant Chair: This chair is designed to incorporate plant life into the user's living space. The chair has built-in planters that allow users to grow herbs and small plants right on the chair. The chair also has a built-in watering system to keep the plants healthy.

While it’s description of the idea feels a little plain, my mind imagined how beautiful an overgrown chair made of plants might look in an otherwise anti-septic modern space. I also made a connection to the practice of Forest Bathing (see Nature Therapy), and how this chair might be a satirical expression of that concept.

I think we’ve got our concept.

Don’t forget to thank the AI before you go … because, future overlords.

Me: Thank you for your service. I like idea number 4. I might come back later to explore this concept after I've had a chance to work on it for a bit.

ChatGPT: You're welcome! I'm glad you found the concepts interesting. If you have any further questions or ideas, feel free to ask me anytime. I'll be here to help.

The Concept: The Plant Chair

It’s a terrible name right now, but we can work on that later. I think a good next step is to generate some visuals. I have a rough idea of what I want, but I am totally open-minded to what AI might produce. Sometimes small details can help build a story around the the concept that can inform wording and details.

Let’s switch gears to Midjourney. There are several AI art generator tools out there, but right now, Midjouney is the most effective tool for generating the highest quality images with the least amount of fuss. Let’s get started by crafting a prompt.

1st Attempt: The initial Midjourney request

/imagine prompt an art deco chair made of plants in a big clean and clean modern room --ar 2:1 --v 4

I am using “—ar 2:1” to set an aspect ratio of 2:1 because I like it wide on my blog. And “—v 4” which specifies version 4 of the Midjourney algorithm, which I am partial to.

1st Attempt: The Results.

Midjourney spits out 4 options.

Alright, I can see that the AI is prioritizing ‘art deco’ from the prompt and missing the idea that the chair needs to be made of plants. Let’s fix the prompt.

2nd Attempt: Fixing the prompt.

/imagine prompt a chair made of plants and vegetation in a modern sunlit clean room --ar 2:1 --v 4

I focused on the chair made of plants and simplified the room. I liked the more sunlit options in the initial render, so I want to lean into that.

2nd Attempt: Planty’er chairs.

Bottom right is the closest option. I am going to ask Midjourney to generate a remix of this one and tweak the prompt in the process.

Remix prompt

an armchair covered in grass, overgrown with plants, in a modern minimalist room, sunlight --ar 2:1 --v 4

Getting close. The bottom left option is my favourite from this volley. I wish the chair was more grassy, so I will remix this again and see what we can get out of it.

product photo of a green armchair covered in grass, overgrown with plants, in a modern minimalist room, sunlit room, fuji velvia 100, f1.8, nikon f3 --ar 2:1 --v 4

I added a few extra bits to this remix prompt. I’m specifying I want a product photo so that it knows the chair’s focus needs to be exaggerated. I also inserted Fuji Velvia 100, which is a slide film known for its rich greens (I used to shoot film a lot, and this knowledge comes in handy now). I also added f1.8, a camera aperture that will contribute to some background blur, and Nikon F3, a very famous 35mm camera from back in the day.

Why add these techno-photo details? Well, these image generator models are trained from images all over the internet, a lot of which have technical detail embedded in their EXIF data, which is read and associated with in the models. This is where having a bit of technical knowledge of the information the model was trained on can offers you a wider vocabulary to express your ideas with.

Again, the bottom left is my favourite option. I’m going to try one more remix and hopefully we can move onto the next step.

ikea-style product photo of a green armchair covered in grass, overgrown with plants and flowers, in a modern minimalist room, sunlight, fuji velvia 100, f8, nikon f11 --no DOF --ar 2:1 --v 4

I added ikea-style to encourage the product photo aspect. I also, changed the aperture to f11, which will make it sharper and reinforced it with a negative prompt “—no DOF”, which stands for Depth of Field (aka background blur).

So close … Again, bottom left is my fave, but it added grass to the floor, which I dont’ want. I will have to fix this in the next remix.

ikea-style product photo of a green grassy armchair covered in plants and colorful flowers, clean hardwood floor, in a modern minimalist room, sunlight, fuji velvia 100, f8, nikon f11 --no DOF --ar 2:1 --v 4

I added colorful flowers and emphasized clean hardwood floors.

I really need to pick something and get on with it. I think top right rendering works. It’s got enough plants. I like the pink flowers. I also like how there’s another spot of pink in the background stool. Time to upscale and work with this.

Look at this beauty. Time to start thinking of how this will manifest as a Design Fiction.

While this Nature Therapy chair is cool and all, it is more of a fictional prototype. Design Fiction is less about being the artifact and more about hinting at the artifact. And I think that some of what I did in the above Midjourney prompts may have just influenced where this is headed.

I’m thinking this image above needs to be an Ikea product, and the image should be surrounded by Ikea-style type and call-outs that hint at what this object is. As if we’re looking at a page from their digital catalogue or website. That feels familiar, fun and Design Fiction’y.

IKEA-ification Begins

Time to grab some reference material.

Free Mail Order Furniture Catalogs This example shows varying type style and call-outs that we can use to inform our Design Fiction.

Grabbing Assets

Lucky for us, Ikea’s font is Arial, which everyone has. We’ve got our rendering above so all we need is a stolen logo from the internet, and we’re good to go.

My secret Google search for acquiring logos. Add SVG and look for Wikimedia Commons as a result. That way you get a clean, vector file to work with.

Upscaling the Main Image

We’ve generated an image above and now it’s time to prep it so we an design around it.

I am going to use Topaz Gigapixel AI to upres to file 4x. High resolution files are much better to work with for editing and output. Also, I like to imagine that everything I create might be published in a book later on, so may as well make it big now.

Before and after side by side of Topaz Gigapixel upscaling.

Editing the Main Image

I use Photoshop, but a lot of this can be done with free alternatives like Gimp or Photopea.com - Or less expensive, one-time-purchase software like Affinity Photo.

There are three things that need to be addressed in the above image.

  1. The top of the image has some kind of fabric thing. I will cut that out and use Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill (more AI) to replace it with a blank wall.

  2. In the left/center of the frame there appears to be some wall outlet type of artifacts. I will erase that.

  3. On the right, the window’s perspective is just plain wonky. I am going to just use the Free Transform tool to make line up the bottom edge to be parallel to the floor.

5 minute later …

Our image is upres’ed and ready to place into Illustrator for layout.

Building the Layout

I’m going to use Adobe Illustrator today, but there are many ways to put this together. Canva, Scribus, Inkscpace or presentation software. There are many options. You do you.

I like to setup my artboard with the main image, and then import any assets like the logo. I also paste my references outside of the artboard. And lastly, type out a few things I can easily copy paste into the layout for rapid creation. In this case, a couple sizes of fonts, an arrow and a red box that I lifted from the reference material.

Before I get to designing, I need to come up with a name for this thing. Type to consult with our friend ChatGPT.

Naming Our Creation

Me: Hey, it's been a minute. I'm coming back to ask you for help with this idea. I decided to make it an armchair made from plants and flowers that you sit in for nature therapy. That way you don't need to leave the house to get outside ... kinda. I'm imagining that it could be an Ikea product. What kind of fun Ikea-style names can you think of for this?

ChatGPT: Welcome back! I'd be happy to help with some fun Ikea-style names for your nature therapy armchair made from plants and flowers. Here are a few suggestions:

FloraLounger
HerbHarmony
BloomBuddy
PetalPod
PetalPod
GreenDream
NatureNest
FoliageFeel
LeafyLounge
BotanicBliss
MeadowMingle

These names incorporate the theme of nature and relaxation, while also being playful and catchy, like many of Ikea's product names. I hope you find them helpful!

The names don’t sound like Ikea names to me. I will correct and re-prompt.

Me: Those are pretty good. But Ikea tends to have Nordic sounding names that sometimes hint to what the product is. Can you give that a shot?

ChatGPT: Sure, I can certainly give that a shot! Here are some Nordic-sounding names for your nature therapy armchair made from plants and flowers:

GrönaStol (Green Chair)
Blomsterstolen (Flower Chair)
VäxtVila (Plant Rest)
NaturNjutning (Nature Enjoyment)
LövLounge (Leaf Lounge)
BotaniskBekväm (Botanical Comfort)
BlomBekväm (Flower Comfort)
GröntRum (Green Room)
VäxtVärme (Plant Warmth)
NaturSittning (Nature Seating)

These names incorporate Nordic language and sound, while also hinting at the product's nature and plant-based qualities. I hope you find them useful!

These name are not too Nordic, losing that foreign double-entendre quality that Ikea names tend to have. I will focus my direction.

Me: That's pretty great. How about more options but this time, try a Nordic and English hybrid.

ChatGPT: Sure, I can definitely give that a try! Here are some hybrid Nordic-English names for your nature therapy armchair made from plants and flowers:

Greenlounge Naturstol
Bloomsit Botanist
Plantperch Växtplats
Leafyseat Lövfåtölj
Naturenest Naturbo
Florafeels Blomsterfåtölj
Botanibalance Växtbalans
Greenhaven Grönfrid
Plantplace Växtplatsen
Petalpod Blomsturna

These names mix English and Nordic elements to create unique and memorable names for your product. They incorporate the themes of nature and relaxation, while also being catchy and easy to remember. I hope you find them helpful!

From everything above, the work Naturstol stands out to me. That totally feels like an Ikea type of product. This is what I’m going to name it.

The rest of the copy I’m just going to freestyle and improvise as I design.

The video above is a timelapse of the layout process in Illustrator. As you can see, I’m making it up as I go along. It’s important to try different things. You’ll notice part of the image darkens at one point in the video. I jumped into Photoshop to help make the call out in that area more legible by burning the exposure a little.

Conclusion

There you go. A peek at a day in the life of making a design fiction entry. Could this have been better. Yes. But I feel like I got 70% there and that’s good enough. By including all this commentary, it added about 2-3 hours to the process. So, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something.

If you’re seeing this on a free trial subscription, consider subscribing. I plan to give away tons more tips, tricks and techniques in future installations.

  1. I acquired these cards in the late twenteens from Near Future laboratory. They are no long in print, but you can get their Work Kit of Design Fiction. ↩︎