As an architect and designer, I am interested in the ways we can enhance human beings’ experience of the everyday physical world. However, in an age defined by increasing digital experiences and decreasing face-to-face interactions, not to mention the advent of AI, it feels at times like designers and tech entrepreneurs have lost sight of what it means to be human.

The last 25 years have been dominated by the digitisation of life: from the advent of social media and dating apps, to virtual communication and remote working. We have witnessed countless paradigm shifts across countless aspects of our lives. Despite the myriad of promises that such advancements would improve our wellbeing and ease our lives; many of us in the developed world report feelings of sensory deprivation, a lack of physical connection, a sense of placelessness and digital fatigue.

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As a result, culturally there is now a growing appetite for: tactility, atmosphere, ritual, physical presence, craft and material authenticity.

My work as a designer therefore strives to respond to that appetite, driven by a philosophy I call: Post-Digital Humanism.

Post-Digital Humanism is the idea that digital tools should ultimately deepen our physical, emotional, and sensory relationship with the physical world rather than detach us from it. Post-digital Humanism doesn’t mean after technology. Instead, it means technology is no longer a novelty, and simply part of the background infrastructure of human life.

Much of early digital design culture (1995-2015) celebrated complexity, novelty, and computational spectacle. Keen to capitalize on the latest software developments, designers - particularly within architectural, graphic and industrial design - explored algorithmic aesthetics and generative form-making, culminating in a distinctive style reflective of the emergent, data-driven digital age.

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With the emergence of AI design tools, and their ability to rapidly generate creative output, we are witnessing a technological craze much like that which drove the Digital Turn of the early 2000s. However, having lived through such a craze before, and considering the unprecedented democratization of creativity that AI tools now afford us, I want to shift the design conversation from: “What can digital-AI tools design?” to: “What should we design with them?”

Therefore, I believe the purpose of AI-Driven Digital Design should not be to increase complexity, but instead, should deepen human experience.

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Ongoing Thread. More from Rory Noble-Turner to follow