Loft: Thank you Audrey for taking the time to talk about the future of design today. With so many things evolving in terms of design, business, and education right now, what do you think we can do, as a society, to practice resilience? 

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Audrey: I think about design resilience as making sure that we are teaching our students future thinking. As an educator, we're teaching students how to think beyond just technical skills, we teach them how to think about the human context and also about non-human actors. Everything that we create, as designers, affects change positively, negatively, or neutrally; it shifts how we work, how we think, and how we interact in daily life.

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As part of my teaching philosophy, I love this quote from Peter Drucker: “Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change”, so our goal is to teach people how to become lifelong learners. When they leave the academy and go on into the workforce, we hope that they do not stay limited to a particular skill set or framework, but they continue to evolve so that they can further innovate and define the future. And that's hard. It's hard to teach people not to think about solutions or techniques, but about continuous learning as a philosophy, and how that will help you and society move forward.

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It's hard to teach people not to think about solutions or techniques, but about continuous learning as a life philosophy.

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One of my early mentors as a young design student here at NC State was a professor named Vince Foote. Vince was an expert in lots of different domains, but the thing that influenced me most, and that I, too, try to imbue with our students is moxie. We strive to teach them not to be afraid to try different things, share their opinions, or ask those complicated questions.

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Especially post-pandemic, I think that students often don't have enough moxie, because they have not been socialized in the same way that previous generations were socialized. That changes the way they interface with the world, and it changes the way they do things like human-centered design research. I'm constantly trying to help them be human first, and teach them to have enough moxie not to be afraid to try something new, in order to learn and grow.

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Loft: Academics are often at the forefront of the long-term vision for their discipline. How do you think about designing for the resilience of our society?

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Audrey: The definition of sustainability, as I have come to understand it, is what most people imagine as a three-legged stool: people, planet, and profit (or financial systems). Each of those things has to be in balance to keep us stable. Resiliency, to me, feels a little bit more like responsiveness.

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I was introduced, many years ago, to the concept of dynamic equilibrium. In ecology, systems are inherently dynamic. Things grow, things shrink, populations change, and climate changes. But the system is at equilibrium because it has the capacity to be nimble and responsive. When I think about design resiliency for our culture and society, that's how I frame it: making systems that are not so rigid that they can't be responsive. Academic institutions, for example, are sometimes not so responsive because they are such icebergs. It takes a lot of strength to make one move. 

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When I think about design resiliency for our culture and society, that's how I frame it: making systems that are not so rigid that they can't be responsive.

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It also means not always being so human-centered in our practice. We tout human-centered design as the pinnacle framework in our field, right? I think it lacks a few things that also need to exist in order for us to continue to share this dynamic equilibrium. There's a concept called life-centered design, which I've kind of grown fond of recently, that takes into consideration the plants, the animals, the air, the sky, the trees, and everything else. I think that it’s important to teach undergraduate and graduate design students about the entirety of our ecosystem in order to deliver resilience. I love the concept of dynamic equilibrium because it scales to every level from individuals, organizations, governments and eventually global ecosystems.

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Loft: At the university level, what do you feel is on the dynamic side and what is on the equilibrium side? What do you feel is changing versus what is stable?

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Audrey: From a design education perspective, I think the biggest thing on everyone's mind right now is AI and what it means. This new set of tools is very dynamic and we are beginning to utilize it regularly, teach it embedded in our classes, and allow students to have access to it as they design. 

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However, you can't begin teaching students with AI. They don't yet have a foundation for being able to make good decisions, unless they're just some sort of savant and are born with that capacity. We need to continue teaching crafting things by hand because that does bring slowness and humanity into the process. This allows them to think about solutions a little bit longer and more robustly, to try something, and to realize how challenging it is to generate ideas and make decisions based on what's in front of you. Tools like Vizcom can make beautiful things that may be really terrible ideas if you don’t understand the foundations. 

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We need to continue teaching crafting things by hand because that does bring slowness and humanity into the process.

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In the university right now, we're at an inflection point and universities are facing a significant shift. We've recently emphasized inclusivity, accessibility, and diverse perspectives in our design curriculum and practice. I believe these are valuable goals. Now, there's a strong push from external forces to move away from these principles. The design field is constantly evolving, and it's crucial for us to adapt. Considering the needs of a wide range of people strengthens our community and builds resilience.

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Universities are also navigating funding challenges. Design programs benefit from corporate partnerships, providing some financial stability. However, government-funded research remains essential. It allow us to explore how we can push the bounds of a technology and create groundbreaking innovation.

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Loft: I also really love the concept of learning the slow skills first, and that’s where there is a bit of tension with AI. There is this need to go fast, but there's also the need to go slow and take the time it takes to produce quality results. How do you help students navigate this tension between speed and the time it takes to produce quality?

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Audrey: As designers, especially working in industry, there's always the pressure that it has to be done tomorrow. At my very first job, I was designing hand tools, and we would joke “it's ID in a day; you have eight hours to skin this product”. And inevitably it would be fine, maybe not brilliant, but fine. Taking the time to think allows you to make better decisions, to think more deeply about the consequence of the thing that you are doing, or the nuance of a material or even a form. And I think there is real value in that.

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I interview a lot of designers, and one of the things I often ask them is about wellness and balance. I would say most of the designers I talk to are so focused on the object. We get in a kind of flow state when we start the design process. And so we work as fast as we can, and we end up burning ourselves out because we are not taking those moments of reflection. And I think you have to have both. You have to have those things that force you to kind of slow your role a little, to have a little bit more care and thought and space. We need to teach students and show our employees that it is important to take space for reflection, and only then can you use the tools of AI. You can make those really quick decisions with AI because you have taken the time at the outset to understand what a good decision process looks like. That is another thing that I try to imbue in my own teaching practice and as a leader in this space.

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You can make those really quick decisions with AI because you have taken the time at the outset to understand what a good decision process looks like.

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I would be curious to know, as you speak to other people, what they think and feel about the role of AI in our collective design toolkit. I wonder sometimes about the implicit bias and the ethical underpinnings of AI, as it is building on everything that has come before. What does that mean for us in terms of designers and intellectual property, and being really conscientious and thoughtful about the way in which things are created so that they don't just exacerbate pre-existing bias in any way, whether it is ableism, racism, or patriarchy embedded into our underlying systems. That is my biggest concern with utilizing it.

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The other thing that I care about with AI, from a sustainability perspective, is that we do not see the embedded energy in systems like that. We do not see the data centers and the huge amount of resources that go into those tools. It will be interesting, as we move forward, to think about whether it is actually helping us that much to create more innovative and interesting solutions, and at what cost. This goes back to the idea of resiliency and making sure that we are not taking too much away from one side in order to create something on the other side. I think that because it is so hidden from view, it is not something that we consider often when we think about this new, amazing tool that allows us to do so much more.

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Loft: Indeed, the whole AI conversation is so technology-forward, but designers haven't had the opportunity to fully shape the technology quite yet. The university is lucky to have you as a design leader to train our future students and professionals!

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