Designing Sustainable,Emotionally-Resonant Materials with AI [HSW]

How might AI transform the way we design sustainable materials? This session explores using generative AI to design nature-inspired, emotionally resonant materials & accelerates eco-friendly adoption by helping designers visualize their applications. By generating textures & color maps & applying them to CAD designs using tools like Keyshot and AI platforms, we can create realistic product renders that connect today's lab innovations to tomorrow's market-ready designs. Examples like cactus leather & the wabi-sabi aesthetic highlight AI's challenges and opportunities in capturing the detailed, imperfect beauty of sustainable natural materials--qualities that deeply resonate with humans. Attendees will learn to integrate AI into workflows for sustainable innovation & use nature-inspired palettes to create and visualize materials that evoke humanizing, nurturing triggers. This session blends technology, craft, and sustainability to inspire innovative approaches to eco-conscious design.


Tiange Wang

Senior Software Designer

IDEO

Tiange Wang is an award-winning and internationally-exhibiting designer and creative technologist. Her work investigates innovative interactive paradigms among humans, technology and the environment. Tackling subjects like climate change, holistic wellbeing, multisensory experiences and speculative futures, she employs mediums including multimodal interaction, creative data visualization, multimedia art, installation, food, mix-reality, software, AI and games. As a senior software designer at IDEO, she leads teams in crafting human-centered, planet-conscious, data-informed and GenAI-enabled product experiences across web, mobile and spatial computing platforms, guiding clients through transformative journeys across technology, health, climate, media, and consumer products industries & taking ideas from concept to launch.

Jason Robinson

Senior Industrial Design Director

IDEO

Jason Robinson has beenleading IDEO’s Industrial Design capabilities since 1995 when he joined thecompany to build and manage the ID prototyping facilities at the Palo Altocampus headquarters. 

In his 30 years as anindustrial designer at IDEO, Jason has worked across every industry from highend consumer products to surgical robots, to industrial and durable goods. Hehas numerous design awards but measures his impact by the number of productsand experiences he has helped clients bring to market that are now part of thecultural fabric of everyday life. For example, he has designed many of the gaspumps being used in the world today. 

As a Senior DesignDirector based in IDEO's Cambridge studio, Jason helps scope innovationprojects and guide teams to deliver world class solutions that are grounded intangible reality and true to the clients business objectives. He isparticularly active at the intersection of emerging technologies and humanbehavior and loves to experiment with new tools and methods ranging from 3dprinting to AR/VR and the rapid advancement of new AI workflows. 

This content will not be available until 06/09/2025 at 9:00 AM (EDT)