ai.dentity

Guided by EPFL + ECAL Lab, participants explored how AI technologies can be integrated into product design to enhance functionality and enrich the user experience. Over the week-long workshop, BA students engaged with the theoretical foundations of AI while experimenting with practical applications across multiple use cases.

Workshop (2023) with EPFL+ECAL Lab

Assistants: Bruno Pauli Caldas
Students: Alejandrina Hernandez, Dona Levy, Oriana Gonzalez Fernandez, Basile Avvanzino, Mathilda Zubek, Noah Stanley, Damien Gabriel, Jeanne Reymond, Eva Reymond, Diego Eiholzer, Giulia Burrus, Arthur Németh, Iris Gerbex, Titouan Longatte, Jean-Elie Matile, Archibald Simon, Jeremy Loup, Gabrielle Lefèvre, Melchior Myard, Benjamin Claus, Salla Vallotton, Gaëlle Palard, Séraphin Monnard, Victoria Guffroy, Chloé Hamel, Virginie Lienhart, Lélie Guiochet
Know-how: Machine learning (ML, AI)

Led by Delphine Ribes Lemay, Béatrice Marie Durandard, and Luis Carlos Rodriguez Aguayo, the workshop encouraged speculative thinking, hands-on experimentation, and reflection on how AI reshapes creative practice, enabling designers to leverage these tools throughout the design process.

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Video by ECAL / Marvin Merkel

Utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for text-to-image generation, each group designed and constructed a stool, drawing inspiration from different thematic starting points. Students not only learned to employ the different AI tools but also gained a solid theoretical understanding of the technology’s technical foundations and its practical applications in parallel to the creative process.

Physical results of the workshop – Images by EPFL + ECAL Lab

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Titled TECHNO WORKSHOPS, a series of workshops explored the creative potential of different technologies in the context of industrial design. Students were able to discover Additive Manufacturing with Rapid Liquid Print, Artificial Intelligence with the EPFL+ECAL Lab, and 3D Scanning with Michel Charlot and the Technopôle Sainte-Croix. These workshops gave them the opportunity to experiment with and reflect on the potential of such technologies, and to envision how they can be integrated into the design process — from early ideation and exploration to the tangible realization of objects and concepts.

TECHNO WORKSHOPS - Video by ECAL / Marvin Merkel

FIND THE OTHER WORKSHOPS HERE:

SHOE REFORM

Project

The Shoe Reform workshop, led by designer Michel Charlot and Siddhartha Berns, representative of AddiPole — a hub for reverse engineering and additive manufacturing — brought students together for an innovative exploration of 3D scanning technologies, in collaboration with Technopôle Sainte-Croix.

RAPID LIQUID PRINT

Project

A short and engaging workshop held in collaboration with Rapid Liquid Print, a Boston-based startup and spinoff of the MIT Self-Assembly Lab, explored the fundamentals of Embedded 3D Printing by questioning, in both technical and poetic terms, what defines a curve, a surface, or a thickened volume as it transitions from the digital to the physical world.

Projects related to Machine learning (ML, AI)

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MA PHOTOGRAPHY

Soft Photography

with Salomé Chatriot, Charlie Engman, Simon Lehner , Milo Keller, Marco De Mutiis, Claus Gunti, Clément Lambelet, Giulia Bini, Simone Niquille

Soft Photography is a research project conducted by the Master of Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne with the support of the HES-SO. It aims to shed light on the role of human emotions in the creation and reception of images produced using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or computer-generated imagery (CGI).

BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Mélanie Martin – Odalys

by Mélanie Martin

Odalys is an artificial intelligence that takes the shape of a glowing doll. She is designed to respond to her owner's every wish at the touch of a button. However, she needs to be setup in a multiple ended narration where the user's choices irreversibly affect the trajectory of their relationship.The intention of the project is to expose the potential consequences of our interactions with generative AIs. The experiment also aims to highlights the over-representation of female shells to sell these products. Odalys is not a woman-object, she is the object of the system to which the user submits her. And she objects it.

BA GRAPHIC DESIGN

Paul Paturel – Modulat – 2025 #2

by Paul Paturel

Grime Index is an interactive VJ-ing project that centralizes, visualizes, and enables navigation through iconic moments of grime — a chaotic genre born on London’s pirate airwaves. By turning audio data into visual identity and live signage, the project makes a performance-based, oral, and improvised culture more readable. Designed for both newcomers and longtime fans, it is built around three interchangeable modules — MC, instrumental, and lyrics — honoring the culture of sampling, MCing, and mixing. Diarization, transcription, dynamic typography, and real-time effects combine to reveal grime’s living and navigable memory.

BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Thomas Gaudin – UnBubble

with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Lara Défayes, Laura Nieder

Unbubble is an interactive installation in which a robot explores a user’s smartphone to analyze their Instagram usage. This intrusive act highlights a paradox: if it’s rare to hand one’s phone to a machine, we nonetheless do so every day by letting algorithms collect our data. Our online habits shape a tailor-made reality that filters, sorts, suggests, and sometimes limits our horizons. Unbubble questions how our digital traces construct a fragmented image of ourselves — one that is then used to guide our choices, desires, and attention. The installation invites us to become aware of these mechanisms and opens up a space to imagine other narratives, other ways of navigating, and other worlds to explore beyond the paths laid out by algorithms.

BA GRAPHIC DESIGN

Dorian Pangallo – Sublime Démocratie

by Dorian Pangallo

In an era where crises follow one another and justify a state of permanent exception, Sublime Democracy is a critical multimedia campaign portraying democracies stripped of their foundations, yet upheld by persistent symbols sustaining the illusion. Designed as a contemporary fable, the work draws on precise presidential speeches and polished visuals, integrating AI as the engine of a critical process where falsehood becomes language. By playing with the codes of power, it questions our habituation to fear, authority, and dominant narratives.

Related courses

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BA INDUSTRIAL DESIGN