Squeezing creativity from an LLM

what if you could learn everything you wanted to know about a product just by asking it directly? What would you ask for a pair of jeans, if these pants could talk?

The Federal City Council approached IDEO to lead a futuring workshop on reimagining Washington D.C.’s downtown in the post-COVID era. With many government employees now working remotely, the central business district’s identity needed to change. The goal of this workshop was to generate innovative ideas to sustainably bring people back and establish D.C. as a model post-COVID global city.

Everything that surrounds us tells a story, from architecture to the furniture we use to the utensils we eat with and the fashion we wear. Materials help shape those stories, communicating how it’s meant to be used and how it needs to be cared for. Industrial Designers must consider material properties, colors, function, lifespan, and cost-effectiveness when bringing a physical design to market. And digital creators must think about the physical properties as if they were in the real world. At the moment, the only creative constraint is we’re limited to using the materials we know exist. But what if we could wave a creative “I-wish-wand” and design a material first?

Capturing vibes, not photons