Why Designers Like Kaiyuan Chen Are Becoming More Valuable in the AI Era
On the internet, industrial design looks almost effortless.
A futuristic rendering goes viral. A sleek AI-generated concept floods LinkedIn. A polished animation makes a product feel production-ready long before it ever enters a factory.
But according to New Jersey-based industrial designer Kaiyuan Chen, most real product development happens in places the public never sees: inside supplier meetings, packaging revisions, logistics calculations, manufacturing adjustments, and retail negotiations.
“Creating the rendering is often the easiest part today,” Chen says. “The real challenge is turning a concept into a manufacturable, commercially viable product.”
As artificial intelligence rapidly accelerates concept generation across creative industries, Chen believes the role of industrial designers is evolving beyond traditional visual development. Designers are increasingly expected to understand manufacturing systems, supply chains, and commercialization alongside product aesthetics.
For designers working in mass-market consumer products, aesthetics alone are no longer enough.
Chen works for a baby products company in New Jersey with products distributed across both online and large-scale retail channels. His work also spans robotics and home appliance design, earning recognition through multiple international design awards. But unlike the internet’s image of industrial designers as stylists focused primarily on form, much of Chen’s day-to-day work revolves around operational systems invisible to consumers.
Factories. Packaging. Shipping constraints. Retail requirements. Supplier coordination.
In other words, the parts of industrial design social media rarely talks about.
“The public sees the sketch and rendering,” Chen says. “But they don’t see the supply chain systems, manufacturing decisions, and commercialization work that determine whether the product can actually exist.”
That disconnect between online design culture and physical product reality has become increasingly noticeable in recent years. While digital platforms reward fast visuals and speculative concepts, consumer products still need to survive manufacturing timelines, logistics systems, compliance testing, transportation costs, and retail conditions before they ever reach store shelves.
“The internet rewards concepts,” Chen says. “Retail rewards execution.”
The shift becomes especially visible inside mass-market retail environments, where small design adjustments can create major commercial consequences.
“A zipper structure change or even a fabric weight adjustment can affect packaging thickness,” Chen explains. “Packaging thickness affects shipping efficiency. Shipping efficiency affects retail cost. Those invisible decisions shape the final product just as much as aesthetics.”
Chen points to a diaper bag project developed for the U.S. market as one example, where he served as a lead designer. The product was ultimately distributed across Walmart’s more than 3,900 stores, becoming one of the company’s largest orders. According to Chen, the project’s success depended not only on product appearance, but on the close integration between design strategy and supply chain coordination.
During development, the team repeatedly adjusted product structures, packaging dimensions, and manufacturing details in collaboration with suppliers and factories to balance usability, production feasibility, transportation efficiency, and retail requirements simultaneously.
“Many people think industrial design ends when the rendering is finished,” Chen says. “In reality, that’s often where the hardest work begins.”
As economic pressure, changing trade conditions, and shifting consumer behavior continue reshaping global supply chains, designers capable of bridging creative thinking and operational systems are becoming increasingly valuable.
For Chen, this transformation may ultimately redefine the profession itself.
“In the past, industrial designers were mainly seen as people who designed form,” he says. “Now designers are coordinating manufacturing, engineering, logistics, retail systems, and consumer behavior at the same time.”
That systems-oriented approach has become particularly important in baby products and household consumer goods, categories deeply connected to daily stress, routines, and accessibility.
“These products exist in very real moments of everyday life,” Chen says. “Good design is not only about appearance. It’s about making products manufacturable, reliable, affordable, and accessible at scale.”
As AI continues to make visual ideation faster and more efficient, Chen believes the future value of industrial designers will increasingly come from their ability to move products through real-world systems and work more with engineers.
In other words, as beautiful images become easier to create, execution becomes harder to replace.
“The sketch is only the beginning,” Chen says. “The real work happens between the idea and the shelf.”