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When ChatGPT launched in 2023, it reached 100 million active users in two months. Now, the wildly popular artificial intelligence (AI) app has 700 million active users weekly, and the number continues to climb. It’s no secret then, that AI is becoming an integral part of daily life and quickly bleeding into the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. According to a recent study by OpenAI’s Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming, 30% of consumer usage is work-related.
For design professionals, this figure can be daunting, especially for those who have yet to test any AI applications. But there are easy ways interior designers and related fields can adopt AI in ways that can save time, streamline workflow, and enhance creativity.
Through his work with his podcast The Curious Builder, Mark D. Williams, founder and builder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc., runs The Curious Collective, which provides forums for designers, architects, and builders to connect and explore new ideas together. One of the most recent sessions for designers explored AI, where Morgan Molitor, a seasoned AI user and founder and creative director at construction2style, gave tips and facilitated discussion on the topic.
“At the end of the day, AI is not taking away creativity. It is giving it back,” she says. “It helps me do more of what lights me up and less of what drains me.”
Read on for quick tips from design-build professionals on how to incorporate AI into your work life.
1. Use Note-Taking Tools in Meetings With Partners and Clients
Have you ever been furiously scribbling notes during a crucial client meeting and have had trouble keeping up? So much so, that you miss parts of the conversation entirely, or are frequently asking for participants to repeat what they’ve just said? AI can lift this burden.
“It allows you to be a little more present in a conversation,” Williams says, who uses AI in this way all the time. Tools like Otter.ai or Microsoft Teams’ AI assistant, Fred, make this easy. “It’s just really nice for organizing your thoughts,” Williams adds, noting that it’s also important to ask parties in the meeting if they are ok with being recorded for note-taking purposes.
2. Let AI Help You Run Your Business
For design-build professionals who have delved into the world of entrepreneurship, AI can help alleviate what is sure to be a heavy workload, especially for small teams.
Bridget Chirigos, principal at Chirigos Designs, says AI has been immensely helpful with project management, saving her team time and streamlining workflow. “We find it’s a good extension of our marketing process and project management,” she says. “Some of the project management platforms are a bit complex for a small firm and do not have the proprietary structure needed for our workflow. So, we simply asked AI to improve upon our internal FF&E (furniture, fixture, and equipment) and spreadsheets as well as Canva, and through several trials, we are pretty close to where we want to be. It not only helps with minimizing oversights, it will also be helpful onboarding new employees much quicker and more efficiently.”
Williams notes he uses Adaptive, a tool created for builders that helps capture invoicing, automating job costing and controlling cash flow, which helps reduce time spent on bookkeeping.
Even the simplest tasks can be overwhelming—especially if you’re a business owner in the design-build industry, getting pulled in multiple directions. Using AI to help start an email draft or polish up your writing can go a long way in saving time.
“I use an app called Fyxer that drafts my emails, summarizes calls, and sends me reminders before I even open my inbox. It saves me hours every week,” Molitor says. “I use DALL·E to visually communicate ideas in my head that are hard to describe, whether it is a new concept layout or a vibe for a marketing shoot. Canva Magic Write helps our team with captions and outlines, and I use ChatGPT for content systems, creative planning, and brainstorming team workflows.”
[Related: Posting With Purpose: A Designer’s Guide to Social Media Strategy]
3. Stuck in a Rut? AI Can Help You Brainstorm
Heather Peterson, principal designer at Heather Peterson Design, finds that AI can be a useful brainstorming tool and can help both designers and clients envision an idea more clearly.
“Currently the main way we are using AI is to render custom elements, which we used to do—not very well—in Photoshop. Gemini [Google’s AI assistant] can ‘apply’ a fabric to a piece of furniture, taking into account the scale and repeat,” she explains. “We can similarly test a wallpaper in a room or see the impact of a darker paint color. It can recolor a light fixture or change the scale of an element, and so on.
“This can be an effective way for us to test out different fabrics and how they will ‘read’ at scale. It is also a great way to sell an idea to a client who can’t ‘see it’ otherwise.”
Molitor finds AI useful in capturing ideas on the go. “My favorite way is by using the ChatGPT app via voice memo all day long. When ideas hit me while driving or between meetings, I send it a quick voice memo to Chat. It stores those thoughts and helps me bring them back into the right conversations, creative projects, or to-dos later. It keeps my brain firing in new directions, from design ideas to marketing strategies, and helps me connect dots faster and later so I don’t forget them.”
4. Save Time to Focus Efforts on Your Craft
As AI becomes more mainstream, Peterson, finds that identifying efficiencies is important for both client satisfaction and creativity.
“I tend to be a late adapter and a bit tool-averse, but I already see how important it will be to get on board with AI,” she says. “While I don’t have any concerns about AI taking my job, I do believe that clients will question the time we spend (and bill them for) on work that could be easily executed in AI, and that finding these efficiencies will give us more time and energy for the creative work and relationship part of our business.”
“I upload a lot into ChatGPT, from my notes and content to decks and conversations. It is basically my digital brain,” Molitor explains. “It helps me spend my energy where it matters most—on creativity and not busywork.
5. Use AI Transparently and Responsibly
Many professionals have reservations about AI adoption—and for good reason. Privacy, data security, transparency of use, and displacing human creativity are among some of the top concerns, which is why it’s imperative to think critically about how you plan to use AI in your professional life.
“I don’t believe we should use AI in any way that replaces who we are and how we communicate to the world, especially to our clients,” Chirigos notes. “They hired humans, not AI. And no matter how great AI can ever be, it will never replace the human heart, creativity, and relationships that make our work so special … We do not use it to create designs, our brand, or communicate to our clients. My team and I work together creating designs for all our projects. I love the collaboration as it breeds creativity. I believe human creativity can never be replaced by a computer.”
Bottom Line
No matter what industry you work in, AI can be a useful tool. And while there are still important societal and ethical questions about AI and its adoption, there are many ways it can be used in the workplace responsibly to aid you in your job and give you back more time to focus on your craft. For beginners wading into the AI waters for the first time, Molitor recommends the following:
- Start with repetition. Anything you do more than once, automate it. That is where you will see the biggest time savings.
- Use it to free up creativity. Let AI handle the boring parts, so you can focus on what you actually love—design, storytelling, and vision.
- Be yourself. AI can help you get started, but it is your tone, ideas, and perspective that make it magic.
- Test and tweak. Do not overthink it. The more you use it, the better it gets at matching your workflow and style.
“I think that the question is, ‘How can AI help me do my job so I can prioritize my time for other things that are more important,’” Williams says. “The problem is, most of us can’t escape our own human nature, which is if we get a little faster here, we just do more. I think it’s up to us to say we need to set a boundary. If we become more efficient, great—go home early, take some more time off, or get creative.”
Need more tips? See Molitor’s AI Tools for Home, Construction, Design, and Marketing
