Artificial intelligence (AI) is still in its infancy. But already its impact is being seen in how people work, create content, search for information, and interact online. Only a fraction of the interior design industry is currently using AI on a regular basis. In the not-too-distant future, however, AI will be integrated into almost everything designers and their clients do.

In this episode, Gail talks with Douglas Robb, creator of Interior DesignHer and founder and editor of Interior Design Toronto. Douglas also assists his wife Nicole with her interior design business, Robb and Company, based in Toronto, Ontario. He is the host of the podcast The Interior DesignHer Podcast.

Gail, who uses an AI tool called Granola almost daily, was interested in how Douglas was using AI in his and his wife’s businesses. Douglas said he is still learning how to use AI and how to get the best results from it. At present he mostly uses it for searching information, content creation (text and visual), and to work out ideas.

Douglas mentioned several AI-driven online tools he currently uses on a regular basis: Chat GBT, Claude, Dall-E (an image-generator program), Perplexity, Gemini, and a third iteration of Google’s image generator called Imagen 3. They are all free and fairly easy to use for those who want to begin exploring what AI can do for them.

In order to help interior designers more quickly become accustomed to using AI, Douglas has created a guide on how to prompt an AI program on design-related topics. He recommends for beginners to spend some time having a conversation with the AI interface, playing with images and image generation, and creating some basic content, perhaps for a blog. Gradually, he said, you will learn to fine tune your prompts to get better quality results.

Gail asked Douglas how he envisioned AI being used in the interior design industry in the future. On the business side, he said, it will allow designers to operate faster, cheaper, better and more efficiently. On the design side, it will enhance designers’ ability to present design concepts, generate images and plans, and present their design ideas to clients with more visual impact.

He added that what AI won’t do is replace creativity, the relationships designers develop with their clients and suppliers, and the level of caring that goes into their projects.

“Creatives are positioned to succeed fantastically with AI,” he said. Designers who want to stay competitive need to become comfortable with using AI in their businesses and design work.

Gail and Douglas also talked about the benefits of podcasting. For that and more, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s12e9-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

To learn more about Interior DesignHer, which aims to help interior designers build better businesses, and the many resources it offers, including The Interior DesignHer podcast, go to the firm’s website at www.interiordesignher.com.

For additional resources and advice on improving your interior design business, check out Interior Design Toronto at www.interiordesign.to. The site includes a directory of recommended interior design products.

For information about Robb and Company, which specializes in residential design and decoration, go to the firm’s website at www.robbandcompany.com.

Douglas mentioned several AI-driven programs he currently uses:

ChatGPT
Claude
Dall-E
Perplexity
Gemini
Imagen

Click here to read Douglas’ guide to AI prompts.

Gail mentioned a program she uses for transcribing and editing meeting notes, called Granola.ai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dNFEnNvj84&pp=ygUYcGVhcmwgY29sbGVjdGl2ZSBwb2RjYXN0

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

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Welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Doug. I’d love for you to just tell us a little bit about yourself and your business. Thanks, Gail. Interior Design Her. It really came about during like the darkest days of COVID when we were all locked up at home and I was helping to homeschool my kindergartener and realizing how amazing teachers are. But what happened was,

About six months before then, I had sold the second of my fitness businesses. I’d had a real life and an online. And I’d sold the second one. I was kind of at loose ends. I’d been working since I’d been 14. This is the first time I’d been without a job of some sort. And other than, like I said, homeschooling my daughter, I got to watch a lot of Netflix and listen to my wife run her residential design business.

from home on the phone. And going back to selling my businesses, the only reason I was ever able to do that was because I had systems set up that at that point, I was irrelevant to the business. People or automations or software did everything. you know, I stuck around for three months when I sold the business to the new owner.

just to kind of help ease them into it. But I really wasn’t necessary. And I realized that my wife, with her design business, she will never be able to sell it. It won’t happen because she’s everything. She’s the creative, she’s human resources, she’s everything. So because I love being married to my wife, I very gently suggested that maybe we could look at pulling those processes out of her brain.

and putting them down on paper and then eventually building that up into something more self-sufficient. And that’s what we did. And that led to us talking to other friends of hers, other designer friends of hers and helping them with that. And then that led to why don’t we do this on kind of a broader scale? And it’s not that I’m an expert on systems by any means.

or running a business by any means, I’ve bought and sold a couple of companies. But I understand that.

designers do a lot. They wear a lot of hats beyond the design side of it. It’s the business side of it. And design school never taught anyone how to run a business. I mean, I guess that’s why you exist, right? Exactly. You fill that gap in the industry and help designers create a better business. So that was my idea for interior designer to create a low cost or no cost business education resource.

for residential interior designers with a soft spot for solo designers and like tiny micro team designers. So that’s where interior designer came from. I got it. Well, that’s great. And of course, isn’t that all is the case every time you build a business is because you see a need in the market or something that’s missing in your own life or your own business. And it just leads you to the direction of developing something that hopefully other people will want to buy. Yeah.

So you’re also a podcaster. So what led you to starting your podcasts? It wasn’t a natural thing. It came about because of Interior Designer, but part of how I started putting my website together and the concept for Interior Designer was listening to podcasts, listening to interior design business podcasts like yours, like Luanne Negara’s and…

You know, I found out pretty quickly that some were amazing and some were less than amazing. And it was the less than amazing ones that gave me the confidence to say, okay, I think I could do it at least that good or bad. So I dove in. are your goals for the podcast? to, to educate. Right.

across the board. that’s fantastic. If anybody gets something from it, I’m happy. But if I can also redirect them back to the website and to all the other content that we’re building out on interiordesigner.com and improve their business. And that could be stuff that we’re building. I’m building different kind of low cost barrier to entry tools, but I also want to…

kind of create a hub where designers can feel comfortable knowing that they can come to the site, find things that they need. And if I can’t provide it, then I can direct them to somebody who can. And th...

AI and the Future of Interior Design (Douglas Robb)