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I recently finished teaching a 3-week course to a group of "Coded Design" students, on using Machine Learning and Generative AI as materials for design and development. I put the course on Github: github.com/knandersen/d...

Over the three weeks, the students created all kinds of fun and aspirational prototypes, including drawing apps, personalized menstrual cycle trackers, creative writing interfaces, motivational poster generators, and much more. A few key points from the course:

1) Technologies are materials All materials have functional, ethical, and aesthetic values shaped by their users and the world around us. Good design is about knowing how much of each material to use, when to use it, and how different materials come together to serve a purpose.

2) Materials don't doom or save us With every wave, people claim a technology will either doom or save us. The truth usually lies somewhere in between, and it's our responsibility as designers to navigate this. We do so by working with materials to deepen our understanding.