In our first podcast episode, we sat down with Alexander "Alex" Kyaw, an interdisciplinary researcher bridging architecture and computer science at MIT.

When Alex arrived at Cornell for his undergraduate, he had barely heard of 3D printers and had never seen a laser cutter. Today, he's pioneering research at MIT that makes complex technologies like AI, VR, and robotics accessible to everyone. His journey offers great insights on navigating the intersection of design and technology.

Breaking Out of Prescribed Path

While his classmates followed the rigorous architecture curriculum at Cornell, Alex was fascinated by the technology that enabled design tools and filed petition after petition to take computer science and information science courses. His advice? If you want to do something interdisciplinary or unconventional, try to advocate for your case even if it might get denied.

"The rules and policies they set up work for the average [person], but if you need a catered path that you want to explore on your own, it's totally an option."

Alex’s quote extends far beyond getting departmental permissions — for anyone working across disciplines, you must get comfortable with navigating ambiguity. Walking the less trodden path can be highly rewarding, but you must have a clear goal in mind and be ready to tackle unexpected challenges along the way.

Finding Motivation Through Purpose

Working across fields means confronting an overwhelming amount of potential knowledge to acquire. Alex's solution? Start with the problem, not the technology.

"The hardest thing when going through a class or learning something new is if you don't know why you're learning it."

Rather than focusing on mastering specific technologies, Alex recommends a question-focused approach - identify problems you want to solve first, then learn the technical skills needed to address them.

Creating Accessible Technology with AI

Alex's most provocative insight concerns how AI is transforming design itself:

"AI is essentially undercutting a lot of the execution part of design. The role of designers will soon become going from ideas to output."

Where designers once spent years mastering technical skills—CAD modeling, rendering software, post-processing—AI tools are increasingly handling these execution elements. This shift liberates designers to focus on conceptual thinking and ideation, potentially democratizing design by removing technical barriers.

This vision resonates deeply with Alex's personal mission to create technologies that augment human capability. His current research focuses on making complex technologies like robotic arms more accessible to those without programming skills. In the past, he has built Curator AI, a platform that uses vision-language models and AR to help people furnish spaces with contextual product recommendations.

"Most of my projects are about designing in a more natural way," Alex explains. "Thinking about how we might bring a computer into the process without changing how we would normally design or make something.

The Courage to Stay on Course

Pursuing interdisciplinary research has made Alex highly comfortable with ambiguity, including uncertainty in his own future: "People often say, 'have a 5-year plan,' but I feel like maybe I have a direction of the work that I want to do, not exactly the stepping stones."

He has faced his fair share of rejections (broadly speaking, and especially very recently, as he was interviewing for internships in tech), and emphasizes the importance of knowing your worth rather than completely reinventing yourself after each setback:

"Every time you face a rejection, you feel like you have to do something different. But oftentimes, if you're changing every single time, you're spending a lot of time reinventing yourself."

While others might view rejection as a signal to transform themselves, Alex sees it differently. Not every rejection is a judgment on your worth—sometimes it’s simply a mismatch of timing, team, or context. It’s important to identify the reason behind the rejections, and stay true to the path you've fought so hard to create.

Alex's story reminds us that true innovation happens at the edges—where architecture meets computer science, where technical knowledge meets human-centered design, where ambition meets humility. It's in these tension points that we find not just new solutions, but new ways of seeing. As we navigate our own creative careers, perhaps the most powerful tool isn't a particular software or skill, but the confidence to stand in uncertainty, to advocate for unconventional paths, and to recognize that our unique perspective is precisely what makes our contribution valuable.

Alex Kyaw recently presented at TEDx Cornell on designing with AI, robotics, and AR, and will be working at Microsoft this summer on AI and human-computer interaction projects. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Using AI to superpower design | Alexander Kyaw