SUTD Becomes World’s First University to Incorporate Design AI in All First Year Courses

The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is revamping its curriculum to provide all first-year students with comprehensive training in Design AI skills, as it reinforces its position as the first Design AI university for the new world.

Effective AY2026, AI will be systematically woven into all three terms of the first year (Freshmore) curriculum through a specially-designed course ‘Innovating with Design and AI’ (iDeA). Through it, students will learn to integrate AI techniques into each stage of the design process, including user research, site and context analysis, synthesis, ideation, concept development as well as prototyping. Custom GPT graders provide formative feedback, while tools like ComfyUI and Midjourney offer visual or conceptual support, enabling students to iterate more quickly and consistently.

In tandem with this, Freshmore courses will also have a greater emphasis on helping students understand the interdisciplinary nature of the world we live in. As a result, SUTD students won’t just be equipped with AI skills, they will be trained to thoughtfully leverage on AI to create effective, practical and translatable solutions that are human-centred, as opposed to being tech-centred. They will generate high-fidelity Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files, produce functional code, or conduct rapid cost and strategic analyses as part of this basic training. This SUTD project-based approach also trains students to discern when to use AI as a tool, collaborate with it as a teammate, or choose not to use it at all.

An example of one such project is Verbasense, an AI-enabled mood-detection stand for tablets, phones and laptops, which last year’s Term 2 students recently completed. Verbasense aims to help educators find out which areas students are struggling with during lessons. The project not only used AI to enhance student-teacher interaction during classes through audio-based mood cues, but also enabled students to accelerate their own design process, facilitating rapid prototyping and iteration through AI.

Having gone through the current Freshmore curriculum, Term 7 student from the Computer Science and Design programme, Muthu Ramaswamy, felt that the revamped Freshmore curriculum is heading in the right direction. He said: “With the revised Freshmore curriculum structure, I believe future batches of SUTD first-year students will have a more holistic design thinking and AI learning experience. This is because they can build on what they have learnt from previous terms as the course increases in depth. I believe that by being exposed to AI early on, they can better understand both its capabilities and limitations and meaningfully integrate these considerations into their problem-solving and design process.”

SUTD Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer, Professor Chee Yeow Meng said: “AI is no longer a ‘what if’. It is already here. But the truth is, many people still do not really understand it, and even fewer know how to use it well. Because it is evolving so quickly, those who do not build these foundations early will find it hard to catch up.

“That is why Freshmore 3.0 is so important. We want every SUTD student to graduate with strong foundations in Design AI that will stay with them for life, even as AI tools continue to change. With these curriculum changes, I am confident our graduates will be ready not just for their first job, but for the decades ahead,” he said.