Almost half of all design firms in the UK (46%) are now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to complete everyday tasks, according to the latest research by software platform Houzz.
This was one of the biggest findings in the company’s first-ever State of AI in Construction & Design report, which polled 145 UK design businesses – 97% of which work in the residential market – about the their technology usage.
Amongst design firms specifically, 31% said they use AI technology either daily or weekly, and roughly 22% said they tinkered with it on a monthly basis. One-in-five (20%) said they don’t use AI at the moment but were exploring its uses, and a staunch 27% said they didn’t use AI in their business and were adamant that they had no plans to.
To those who are using AI technology, Houzz asked how much time users believed they were saving each week, with the average response being about three hours.
One third of respondents (33%) believe the time they save is less than an hour, 27% believe they’re saving between one and three hours a week, roughly one-in-five (17%) say they’re saving three to five hours, and 14% believe they’re saving somewhere between five and eight hours a week. Staggeringly, nearly one-in-ten (8%) believe they’re saving more than eight hours of time a week by using AI to tackle their workloads.
Houzz found that within businesses that use AI regularly, 88% said that it was used to complete administrative tasks, roughly half (48%) use it for sales and marketing, 40% use it for planning and design, 36% use AI for project and client management, and a quarter of businesses (24%) used the technology to handle business operations and reporting.
Houzz also asked respondents for their general concerns over the widespread use of AI technology in recent years. The most popular answer was reliability and accuracy, which was a concern shared by roughly a third of users (33%).
This was followed by 16% of people concerned around a lack of training, 11% concerned over a lack of personalised service, 9% who had reservations around the complexity of actually implementing AI, and 6% who had doubts about how much it would actually cost them to implement AI technology.
Interestingly, a quarter of respondents (24%) said they had other concerns that did not neatly fall into the categories mentioned above, and a blissfully unbothered 6% of AI users also said they had “no concerns” about AI whatsoever.
When it came to their levels of satisfaction with current AI tools, roughly three-in-five (60%) were positively satisfied with their own use of the technology. Looking at that in more detail, one-in-five (20%) were “very satisfied”, and 40% were “somewhat satisfied”. An additional 36% said they were neutral about their use of AI, and the remaining 4% admitted to being dissatisfied.
Looking ahead, respondents were also asked how transformative they believed AI’s impact will be in five years’ time. Three-in-five (59%) responded that it will “transform the industry”, while two-in-five (41%) are convinced AI will only have a “limited impact”.
“AI innovation in construction and design is accelerating, creating a competitive advantage for pros who adopt it,” commented Alon Cohen, Houzz co-founder and CEO. “As the report shows, pros in our industry are approaching this era with openness and a strong desire to learn.
“The future is about adopting AI to build stronger, more successful businesses. At Houzz, this vision has guided our work: delivering powerful AI capabilities in Houzz Pro software to boost productivity across every phase of a project and client relationship.”
