AI Insights 2024 emerged from SCAD’s inaugural AI Summit held in February 2024, uniting creative design leaders from companies such as Google, Gensler, Netflix, and ServiceNow with SCAD’s academic leadership. This groundbreaking event, powered by the university’s applied research unit, SCADask, explored the transformative impact of AI on creative industries and careers, fostering a dialogue among innovators and educators to chart the future of design.
The initiative sought to: examine AI's influence on design processes and its integration into professional practices; equip SCAD students and faculty with the tools and knowledge to thrive in AI-enhanced environments; establish SCAD as a leader in AI-driven education by bridging industry and academia; highlight ethical considerations in AI use, emphasizing transparency, inclusivity, and human-centered design; and develop actionable insights to guide curriculum evolution and student preparation for AI-augmented roles.
The insights report synthesized the collective thought leadership, analysis and ideas from summit participants, offering a comprehensive view of AI’s potential to amplify creativity while preserving human artistry. It also provided a framework for ongoing research, practical applications, and ethical practices in design, empowering SCAD to lead the way in integrating technology with design.
Bringing AI Insights 2024 to life was a bold and collaborative endeavor rooted in strategic planning, creative execution, and interdisciplinary teamwork. The project began with the SCAD AI Summit in February 2024, a milestone event that explored AI’s transformative potential to enhance creativity and efficiency in design industries.
Before the summit, SCADask conducted a comprehensive survey about AI use and implications among creative business leaders across more than 35 industry sectors, the results of which led to discussion topics for the summit and quantitative data. The integrated summit discussions and survey findings became the foundation for the AI Insights 2024 report, a 64-page, full-color publication structured around SCAD’s institutional values: Be Collaborative, Be Strategic, Be Positive, Be Innovative, Be Compassionate, and Be Transformative. Each chapter paired actionable recommendations with thought-provoking quotes from summit participants, student case studies, and striking visuals of student work that used AI. The report addressed key themes like the importance of foundational skills, collaboration, ethical considerations, and the strategic implementation of AI to drive innovation.
Challenges included synthesizing extensive feedback from the summit and survey as well as collecting and curating student use cases, including the negotiated prompts that led to their final solutions. The summit audio recordings resulted in a 225-page transcript that required organization and analysis. Combined with detailed notes taken at the summit, key themes and quotes were found to complement survey data. The qualitative and quantitative research, when combined with student use cases tells the story of how design moves forward when emerging technologies are embraced by the creative community. Through careful communication, teamwork, and iterative refinement, the SCADask team produced a comprehensive and actionable report to guide the overall design community while providing recommendations for the university at large.
What sets AI Insights 2024 apart is its holistic approach. By combining expert insights, data analysis, creative student work, and SCAD’s institutional ethos, the project bridges academia and industry while emphasizing the importance of ethical AI practices. This initiative showcases SCAD’s commitment to leading the conversation on AI’s role in creativity, positioning the university as a thought leader in the evolving design landscape.
The summit and SCADask’s AI Insights 2024 resulted in open discussions about the technology and its implementation in curriculum. As a result, the university created the following: the SCADask AI Advantage Portal, a dynamic and strategic resource hub for the design community that provides information on the latest AI programs, ethical use, and celebrates student use; proposals for AI-specific classes that encourage students to employ AI for research, ideation, and creative inspiration while understanding the technology's limitations and ethical use; curriculum design that integrates AI use in courses like art history — where students recreate paintings via prompting as a way to develop their design language and descriptive vocabulary, or in equestrian studies where AI is used to analyze equine gait abnormalities; and AI-based workshops that range from AI's role in storytelling to how it enhances internal processes.
These platforms arm student designers with the digital literacy that employers expect to see in new hires. The university's mission to prepare talented students for success through positive engaged learning underpins initiatives like the SCADask AI summit and AI Insights 2024. SCAD is actively working to equip current students with the skills necessary to utilize AI technologies. Additionally, we encourage graduates to enter their chosen fields with confidence, streamline workflows, and explore creative options they didn’t think were possible.
