It’s not just the capacity, it’s capability to think and select: Anne Asensio, Dassault Systemes

The design is often seen as an industry process and an ideation trajectory but in reality, the design is much more than just a process. It is something much greater, it is actually the way we as human beings are thinking about a change in the environment.

We spoke to Ms. Anne Asensio, Vice-President Design Experience Dassault Système, to understand how is technology transforming the design process and how artificial intelligence can impact the design practice!

She talked about her journey, “At the beginning of my career in the car industry the design department used to master the most innovative technology. My Journey at Dassault Systèmes began ten years ago because I always had an inclination towards the design practice, towards the scientific tools and 3D technology.”

Impact of AI on the design process

Artificial intelligence has nothing to do with the design when it comes to basically imagine. We at Dassault Systemes are certainly progressing and implementing the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to make it actually the place where we can socially interact with other, colliding ideas, making the emergence on the completely innovative proposition and this is really what we
call design thinking.

Bringing intelligence to design process

When you are designing innovation, you need to be informed. So, information starts first, designers have to do design research and intensive inspiration research goes behind. We have developed 3DEXPEREINCE platform, it is a tool of market intelligence but it is also being used for designers to actually filter relevant information for their design, for their invention. Typically, you know what makes a designer a designer, it is not just the capacity of doing, it is the capability to think and select what is relevant in this environment. So giving the designers a larger sample of choices will increase his creativity and capacity to actually tackle a very complex problem, so that is number one.

Another example is the ability that we have within the 3DEXPEREINCE platform to represent not just a product but the full experience within the platform. When we say designing the experience means that you are not trying to capture the physical aspect, the 3D form of that design but also all of the usage, all of the life cycle, all of what is being dependent interaction with these products for making a meaningful experience for the user. To map such a complex system of interaction we have within the studio started to develop a specific product that combines design methodology and engineering system.

Digitisation and beyond

In the Past, the designing processes were mostly a transformation that are being improved, the best practice that could build on and calculation and step-by-step innovation-by-innovation we must process but mostly come from the control of the matter, the control of the practice of transformation.

What digital does on the second hand, in the past, it used to just improve the efficiency of the previous process. But what is happening right now is when you are capable to fully comprehend what you do on a digital ground, then all of your assets that are being digitalized are becoming just a material. They are not a process anymore and if you consider also the people who are using those solutions. Those digital solutions that means the engineers, the designers, the manufacturers, the sourcing people they are changing the position.

The boundaries of the design process are falling apart and someone who used to be very well containing in a particular specialized work get to be basically in much more transparency, looking at what each other is doing through the digital markup, through the possibility to have a lot of all of the actions, through the possibility also to virtual universe that will be helping you to virtually see all of the states of the design at any stage and visualize it and make decisions, that means that decision could not be made just by one person but anyone who will see it.

How it works for us is, we have a very long story and legacy of providing digital transformation to our customers in the area what they do. But today with the 3D experience platform we are basically shifting to provide them with a way to think about how we will transform our self to offer what will make them sustainable in this transformation, that means they will offer something completely new and we will be not only giving them now digital tools but the ability for them to imagine what they can do with those tools and that is also where design thinking comes into play.

Advantages to the digital manufacturers

Every company today does design ideation apart of the design process and the engineering process and the industrial process. Basically, the designers think a beautiful idea and then we try to catch those, that ideas as much as we can with the processes we know, with the best practice we know, with the matter we know and so on.

What has been a huge accelerator is the capacity to actually design the value proposition that means the experience that could end up with the asset or product or maybe a complex system that ends up to be very powerful when everybody is using it, that could be transportation or whatever.

What has been very strong is the capacity to design in context. It means that for the ideation process to not be disconnect to what could be built but to be completely embedded into the complete intelligence so what will be the engineering capabilities or the industrial capabilities. Or furthermore, the sustainable capabilities meaning designing in conscious and in context and with the idea also to provide a continuity in the experience for the user and a continuity on a circular economy approach of how the product will be not only design and fabricated and sell but how they will be at any time – recycle or maybe just regenerate into the system. So having these as a value I will say paramount is really what I see as from my side what the 3D experience platform is offering.

The risk in the design industry, the current scenario

If you look at the technology it is being a tremendous, in term of error, risk and also result – outcome result that means it goes beyond any of the what we can imagine, but we cannot do that. What is happening is whatever we are improving our technology, whatever we are improving the talent that is being onboarding into the platform, whatever we see more and more talented young kids coming from universities specifically here in India, very brilliant people, we get them on board.