is product design dead?

Surf Board shaper Neil Randall (if6was9) at work

Recently I keep stumbling upon debate about the death of product design, not in terms of definition, a change of name or description, but in terms of people,  it is claimed that product designers will be replaced by computers and machines.  This is not a new debate, but it has got me thinking.  If a computer can generate randomly or selectively, a thousand different skins for a product in a matter of seconds, what need for a designer?  I always took comfort in the slim hope that computers would not be able to understand or incorporate into the design the human aspect we currently take for granted.  For example, I recently watched a program about women designing products for women, with greater understanding than any male could bring to the table.  Could a computer grasp the subtlety that potentially a male designer may not?  Yes a computer could generate aesthetically pleasing exteriors to products, but will it ever be able to link in the human centred design elements that demonstrate the deeper, intangible aspects that humans intuitively bring to their designs.  

A few years ago I visited an old University amigo who was shaping surf boards in Australia.  I spent a few days in his work shop and had a go at shaping a mini board.  Whilst I was able to replicate the shape of a surfboard what i didn't understand was why, because I wasn't a surfer.  He was an excellent surfer and would feel the board and know what an extra millimetre off the thickness would do to the handling, how altering the curve would subtly affect the way the board carves through the water allowing him to tailor the board to an individual or making each board subtly unique.  Having hardly ever surfed, these are things I could not appreciate and thats the thing, products are designed by humans to be used by humans.  

A computer will be able to do subtle things to shapes that I can only imagine, but will it understand the humanity of the reasons why?  Probably not, but I don't think it will need to?  Due to advances in scanners etc in the future a human could walk into a booth (or through an airport) and within seconds the machine would know everything it would need to about that person, their grip strength, how much arthritis they have in their hands, underlying medical problems, their balance etc, then it could print products specifically tailored to their needs and they'd be ready for them to collect on the way home.  It could also monitor sales to work out which objects are aesthetically pleasing to each geographic area, age, sex etc, so that it can produce designs that will have a much higher chance of appealing.  A few years of statistical data build up and advancement in this area and it will probably have us all figured out. Maybe if/when this happens, product design as we know it will be dead, but by that time, based on the teachings of many science fiction films (Terminator, Matrix, I-robot etc) the death of product design and industrial design, will be the least of our problems!