Titan experimenting with Artificial Intelligence led product design

Artificial Intelligence (AI) or often called as machine learning, is finding its feet in every field. Be it stock trading, marketing, healthcare or fraud detection, the AI is certainly giving humans a run for their money. The newest addition of AI is coming in the product design front. That is the newest area in the consumer facing businesses where trends, fashion, preferences and taste changes every now and then. And the companies, already burdened with R&D overheads, are just not able to cope up with the fast change.

Titan Company, a part of the USD $100 billion plus revenue Tata Group, has found an innovative way of using the AI-led design in its range of personal accessories like watches, jewellery, sunglasses, and eyewear. The idea is in a very initial stages, say people familiar with the development. This Bangalore-based company is actually experimenting with the AI-led product design model.

Clearly, the use of AI is going to power the Titan's product manager or product engineer with a massive tool to think not only of most relevant and topical designs but also churn out hundreds of variation with just a click. This is going to be a collaborative project of physical designers and machine engineers. Under the AI-led model, the data about the latest consumer trends can be fed into a computer by writing an algorithm and then machine learning takes over. There is a huge scope of adding the most trending colors and icons into the final design based on social media feed. Similarly, the bots can pull out information from Instagram pictures and other trends from around the world.

The AI-led design also offers a whole new space of developing a product design from scratch. The AI can help in building something based on new concepts and ideas. Titan Company would probably the first consumer company experimenting with all these new technology ideas. The company expects to come out with something concrete in a year or so.

Currently, the company has design studious for watches and jewellery for product innovation.

In a fast changing competitive market, the AI-led product design can be of huge help to companies like Titan to innovate faster and also time the market quicker. Globally, the consumer focused companies are facing multiple challenges like shorter product cycles, fast changing consumer needs and preferences and high cost of designing and innovation. The use of AI would greatly reduce the cost for companies.

There are some who says AI also opens the doors of traditional companies for start-ups to come and collaborate on product design.