In the near future, the Internet of Things (IoT), which equips products and systems with sensors that continually monitor, analyze, and send back information about how the product or system is functioning. These numbers and charts will become increasingly important to engineers and designers as software and sensors endow objects with “smart” capabilities, Jeff Kowalski, Autodesk chief technology officer, told attendees at Autodesk University.

More than 10,000 designers, engineers, and manufacturers are at the event, held this week in Las Vegas.

For instance, the IoT could funnel product information back to designers after the product has been sold, giving designers valuable feedback on how their designs function in the real world. Based on the information, designers might choose to tweak in future versions, Kowalski said.

Design software will continue to evolve in other ways to enhance how designers work, notably by including “smart” capabilities, he added.

Consider the towel dispenser that hangs above the wastebasket in many public restrooms. Often, people wave their wet hands under where they assume the machine’s sensor is located, only to discover this dispenser’s sensor is on the side. Or that, instead of waving, they need to turn a hidden crank to get a paper towel, Kowalski said.

“If this machine connected its designer to the things she’d designed, she’d know better how to fix the thing she made,” he said. “Or maybe the owner could download a patch to make it work better.”

Another example: the Hack Rod, a car designed by the Bandito Brothers media company based on real-world feedback in the form of data gathered while racing a prototype equipped with innumerable sensors in the way the Bandito Brothers wanted their Hack Rod raced. The prototype’s driver even wore a EEG to record feedback from the way he moved and the forces he experienced.

Mouse McCoy, Bandito Brothers creative director and CEO and a former stuntman, worked with Autodesk research fellow Mickey McManus to make usable the numbers returned by the sensors.

“As he drove it, the sensors on the car recorded the forces the chassis was being subjected to, McManus said. “We got tons of data that we plugged directly into a generative design tool from Autodesk called Dreamcatcher.”

The result, the chassis perfect of the Hack Rod, Kowalski said.

“This is something that’s impossible for a human to have designed and yet a human did, when augmented by generative design and an external nervous system,” he added.

Soon, through machine learning, designs tool will be able to call upon algorithms to learn how a designer works in order to offer suggestions and make intuitive changes on the fly, he said.

“A design tool that learns you. That’s how technology can augment us cognitively,” Kowalsk said.

Similar tools are already here. Take, for example, the photo software included within your smartphone, which learns and automatically identifies the faces of friends and family you photograph the most.

And design software can endow humans with physical properties they might not have on their own. Kowalski pointed to solider Steve Martin, who had his legs amputated after a bomb strike in Afghanistan. Now he uses prosthetic legs.

“Designers worked on an interface to lessen stress on his body while walking and running,” Kowalski said.

The reward? Two years ago, Martin finished the 13.1-mile course at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle Marathon.