I came across the Royal Commission’s 2026 Design Fellowship brief on “Deep Design & Human Creativity in an Age of AI and Uncertainty” and it seems to overlap with many of the conversations happening here. Interesting opportunity.
As AI makes production easier, the challenge is shifting as less time is spent creating outputs.
More time is spent:
→ framing problems
→ defining constraints
→ evaluating tradeoffs
→ interpreting user feedback
→ building shared understanding
“The fellowship should show how human craft, cognition, intuition and relational intelligence can be integrated with (or intentionally set apart from) AI systems”
I thought this was pretty interesting- Designers getting into the meat of things
A Set of Demonstrator Projects (1–3 case studies)
Real or prototype design interventions showing human-AI hybrid processes.
May include materials, services, spatial concepts, or digital tools.
I think the work will keep overlapping with everyone who’s in tech. Seems that value comes from people who are able to consume problems holistically, while also affecting more layers of the business (pushing decisions).
Will we all be CEO’s at some point? Feels like we’re headed in that direction.
There is lots of grant money out there. We have applied for some already and will continue.
The human / AI division is real super powers if both sides play to their strengths.
Humans are good at generating signal in low-information environments. They look at a vague situation, sense what matters, produce a rough articulation that captures the essential thing. They are inconsistent, fatigued by repetition, allergic to systematic enumeration.
AIs are the inverse. Tireless, consistent, willing to enumerate the 47th edge case after the human gave up at 12. Derivative, statistically average, prone to producing competent mediocrity unsupervised.
I think this nails the difference between humans and AI.
I find this an interesting read that seems to play well with the ideas:
