I’m interested in the posts on this thread so far. Having researched a while into this area doing my university thesis, I happened to stumble upon tools, such as generative design based on evolutionary algorithms, in many industrial engineering research papers of late. Other similar tools include shape morphing and shape grammer. For a while, I was sucked into the potential of these tools. Having a bunch of forms that are automatically generated and from which you can pick from and develop into potential products was incredibly appealing.
However, after researching deeper into this, I eventually came to a similar conclusion as sanjyoo9. Basically lets break down what we as designers are always trying to do - add value by creating meaning in products we design. What do we mean by meaning? Meaning is created on many levels - the visceral, the behavioural and the reflective (as termed by Norman). If we closely examine generative design tools, we find that these do indeed help us design better, but only in the visceral level of emotional design. If we drilled down even further, I would say that it is specifically aided in the visual aspect of design.
At the end of the day, what I would like to say is this. I don’t think generative design should be dismissed as a tool, but do see it as a tool that aids the type of product we are designing. Generative design would probably be an excellent tool if we were to design say a mature product, where the behavioural aspect of it is not going to be redesigned and the reflective aspect is probably non-existent. An example, a computer mouse. Funtionally, we’re all used to just putting our hands over it and we aren’t going to be philosophisizing over the mouse. So, satisfying the visceral aspect is suffiicient to succeed in the market I guess.