Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

This project investigates the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and human-centered design (HCD), emphasizing AI’s role in enhancing design communication and visualization while recognizing that emotional engagement remains uniquely human. The initiative includes workshops that equip students with AI-driven tools for concept development and design ideation while underscoring the importance of human insight.

A cross-disciplinary AI art and design competition will challenge students to explore AI’s potential to enhance the culture of care and emotional resonance in design. The winning projects will be featured in a juried exhibition, inspiring innovative approaches that integrate AI with emotional engagement. This project highlights AI’s ability to support, but not replace, the emotional and sensory aspects of design communication.

Artificial Intelligence Tools For Designed Environments Course (PDF)

This project aims to align the College of Design’s curriculum with the business community’s demand for AI-savvy graduates by developing two workshops — one for students and one for faculty — focused on integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into professional and academic contexts like architecture, landscape architecture, community and regional planning, and real estate.

For students, it provides hands-on AI training and resources to meet employer expectations, from basic to advanced skills in data analysis and design innovation, while faculty gain tools and insights from industry professionals to adapt teaching methods effectively. The initiative fosters collaboration between academia and design/real estate professionals, ensuring graduates are equipped with practical AI competencies and enhancing their employability in a competitive market.

This project is an elective course, ARCH 5280B-02: Phygital Fabrication, that integrates the creative use of AI and fabrication while emphasizing digital-to-physical workflows. Open to all design majors, the course introduces students to AI-driven tools for design collaboration and 3D generation, resulting in fabrication.

Through hands-on projects, students will experiment with AI-assisted design and modeling, moving between digital models and physical prototypes. The course encourages a collaborative approach, leveraging AI as a tool for expanding creative possibilities, refining ideas, and exploring new modes of making across disciplines.

Phygital Fabrications, A College of Design Innovation & Entrepreneurship Series Course (PDF)

This project will study the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development into design education by equipping students with the skills to create their own AI tools tailored to their personal design processes. An architecture studio will serve as a pilot study for the creation of teaching and learning materials in support of creating custom AI tools.

Students will develop AI agents to research topics, generate ideas, and refine their design proposals. Their development processes will be recorded and evaluated to understand the impact of this approach. The goal of this work is to better understand how AI itself can be cultivated within education to provide individualized support for how students make, think, and learn, now and into the future.

DSNS 5460: Civic Hydrology is an advanced interdisciplinary studio bringing students from design and engineering together to address complex issues in the built environment while leveraging tools, knowledge, and experience from each other. This semester, we worked with local leaders from two Iowa communities that participated in the Iowa Mayors’ Design Workshop – Atlantic in southwest Iowa and Cedar Falls in northeast Iowa –  to develop proposals related to flooding and public space along urban waterways.

In a cross-college collaboration, Civic Hydrology is co-taught with Sara McMillan, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. Students in her ABE 4340: Ecosystem Restoration Engineering class have partnered with College of Design students to investigate stormwater and hydrology as form-givers, exploring how hydrologic processes shape physical spaces as well as our understanding of place.

Design/Shift was the graphic design department’s first-ever philanthropic design-a-thon. During this one-day event in early April, 18 local design professionals – many of whom are Iowa State alumni – mentored teams of undergraduate and graduate graphic design students to provide creative services to 18 central Iowa nonprofit organizations.

This was a great service-learning opportunity for students to use design for good, tackle real-world challenges, and create meaningful impact for local communities.

This service-learning project will engage residents of one of the 2024 Iowa Mayors’ Design Workshop communities through data sharing, visioning sessions, and hands-on planning to create safe, healthful, and accessible non-motorized trail routes for pedestrians and bicyclists in Marshalltown.

Students from CRP 4360: Community Economic Development will assist in developing budgets, alternatives, and community benefits, while gaining experience working with community residents and local planners.

Murals in Community (ARTIS 4820/5820) is an eight-week summer course focused on the creation of a mural in the small and vibrant southwest Iowa community of Atlantic, which participated in the inaugural Iowa Mayors’ Design Workshop. Part of the College of Design’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Series, this course will engage students in community collaboration on a large-scale public art project.

Students will shepherd the project through many phases, from ideation and pitching proposals to a community committee to workshopping with the community and managing mural execution/workflow.

Murals in Community, A College of Design Innovation & Entrepreneurship Series Course (PDF)