Celebrating the Six Recipients of the Eighth Annual Diversity in Design Scholarship

This year’s scholarship invited minority students enrolled in design or architecture programs to explore how designers can use AI while preserving an authentic creative process grounded in representation, lived experience, and human judgment. Essays were reviewed anonymously by leaders from IA and the IIDA Foundation.

Haruko Utsuki, a student at New York School of Interior Design, received the first-place scholarship for “Finding Balance Between Human Creativity and AI.” Samia Hilton, an interior design student at Texas State University, received the second-place scholarship for “From Prompt to Place: Protecting Meaning in Design.”

Four additional honorable mention scholarships were awarded to Connor Trang of Florida International University for “What’s Authentic in a New Age?”; Leta Pham of San Jose State University for “The Use of AI in a Green Industry”; Aneisha Muhammad of London Metropolitan University for “AI and the Lived Experience”; and Zephyr Corchado Gil-Phillips of the University of Texas at Arlington for “The Importance of Human Touch in the Creative Process.”