L-R: Ada Nwobodo, Financial Secretary; Jacqueline Aki, President; Adesuwa Oham, Committee Leader – Project & Planning; and Omeba Ejiogu, Assistant Secretary General, all of Interior Designers Association of Nigeria (IDAN) during the 2025 World Interior Day celebration in Lagos.
Jacqueline Aki , President of Interior Designers Association of Nigeria (IDAN) has advised interior designers in Nigeria who are willing to advance in the profession to embrace emotive design, lived experience and artificial intelligence (AI).
She stated this during the IDAN celebration of the 2025 World Interiors Day, themed; “Designing with Emotion; Building with Intelligence,” in Ikoyi Lagos recently.
She urged interior designers to lean on three powerful intersections, which are “Emotive design—the ability to create spaces that connect deeply with human emotion. Not just beautiful spaces, but healing. Liberating and Uplifting spaces.”
According to her, “Designers must have lived experience, which is understanding how design is received, inhabited, and remembered. How does a space feel at 8 a.m. versus8 p.m.? How it supports joy, inclusion, dignity.
She said “AI is not a replacement for creativity, but as a collaborator and aggregator. A tool to extend our thinking, not override it. The challenge before us is to integrate intelligence—human and machine—with emotional and ethical clarity. To ensure that technology serves human-centred design, not the other way around.”
Aki said; “Today is more than a date on the calendar. It is a global affirmation of the value of our work— the unseen hands, the thinking minds, the empathetic hearts behind the spaces where people live, heal, gather, and grow.
Speaking on the theme, Assistant Secretary General of IDAN, Omeba Ejiogu said, “We actually adapted the theme to make it feel more relatable to our audience here in Nigeria. The idea is simple: design isn’t just about how things look—it’s about how they make people feel and how well they function. Right now, it’s so important that our spaces do both—comfort people emotionally and work smartly in today’s world. That’s really what inspired us.”
On how IDAN is helping designers grow in Nigeria, she said that “At IDAN, we’re all about building well-rounded designers. We want our members to have strong technical skills—but we also want them to design with empathy”.
Speaking on the future of the industry in Africa, Ejiogu said, “I am so excited about the future. Africa is full of stories, materials, and ideas the world needs to see more of. My hope is that we keep building a design identity that’s proudly Afrocentric—authentic, bold, and innovative. I’d also love to see more African designers involved in bigger conversations—urban planning, education, healthcare—because we belong at every table where spaces are being shaped.”
The keynote speaker at the event, Founder, HTL Africa Limited, James George who spoke on designing with emotion said that from the perspective of his firm, “We see the world, especially as African with a mix pot of emotions that has to be harnessed through design and creativity. We also see the environment in that way.”
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