AI, BUT PHYSICAL. 2026
Design a physical product that uses AI to create a genuinely new and meaningful human experience. Move beyond the screen. Reimagine how people could interact with intelligence through physical form, movement, sound, material, space and touch. AI, BUT PHYSICAL. What happens when intelligence becomes something you can actually interact with?
- Entry fee
- Free
- Prize
- £500
- Winners
- 1
- Runners-up
- 10
- Deadline
- September 30th
- Results
- October 30th
The brief
AI is changing how we work, create, communicate and solve problems, yet our interaction with it is still overwhelmingly digital.
We type, tap, scroll and speak to interfaces that exist almost entirely behind a screen.
Your challenge is to imagine a different future: one where AI becomes part of the physical world.
Design a physical product that uses AI to create an experience that could not exist in the same way without it.
Start with a person, behaviour, need or opportunity - not the technology.
Consider what AI could understand, predict, learn, adapt to or create when it is embedded into a physical object.
Your product might move, change, respond, guide, organise, teach, assist, anticipate or collaborate with its user.
Think beyond screens, buttons and voice assistants.
Explore how intelligence could be communicated through movement, light, sound, texture, shape, temperature, force or physical interaction.
The strongest concepts will not simply put AI inside an existing product; they will rethink what a product can be because AI exists.
We want to see products that feel intuitive, surprising, useful and desirable.
Most importantly, we want to see industrial design doing something that software alone cannot.
**Make intelligence physical.**
Judging criteria
Every competition is judged independently and in-house by Design Something. Submissions are scored anonymously against the published criteria and their weightings, and the scores are aggregated to produce the ranking.
25%
Relevance to brief
How directly the product uses AI to do something a conventional object could not, and answers the brief as written.
25%
Design resolution
Form, mechanism, materials and manufacture decisions that hold together as a buildable product.
20%
Originality
A genuinely new position on the object, not a familiar product with a screen added.
15%
Feasibility
Realism about components, cost, assembly, servicing and end of life.
15%
Presentation
Clarity of drawings, renders and written rationale across the A3 pages.
Submission requirements
- —Submit one complete project presentation.
- —Your submission must clearly communicate the problem, insight, concept and final design.
- —Include a project title and short introduction.
- —Include the user, problem or opportunity you identified.
- —Include relevant research and key insights.
- —Show your concept development and exploration.
- —Explain how AI is used and why it is essential.
- —Show the physical interaction and user experience.
- —Show the final product from multiple views.
- —Explain how the product works.
- —Include relevant materials, manufacturing and technical considerations.
- —Show the product in a realistic use scenario.
- —Include high-quality sketches, renders, photography, diagrams or prototypes.
- —Maximum **10 × A3 pages, landscape**.
- —All work must be submitted digitally.
- —**Show us something that could only exist because AI became physical.**
Rules
- 01Your entry must be a physical product (you do not need to produce a physical product, just design one).
- 02AI must be fundamental to the experience.
- 03Your concept cannot simply be an existing product with AI added to it.
- 04The primary interaction cannot rely on a conventional screen.
- 05Start with a genuine human need, behaviour or opportunity.
- 06The physical form must contribute meaningfully to the experience.
- 07Your design must demonstrate a clear reason for using AI.
- 08Your concept should be technically plausible within the foreseeable future.
- 09Your design should consider materials, manufacturing and real-world use.
- 10Your entry must be original and your own work.
- 11Concepts must be safe, legal and ethically responsible.
- 12The judges' decision is final.
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