Exploring the Use of GenAI in the Design Process: A Workshop with Design Students

Abstract: The introduction of artificial intelligence into the design process is bringing fundamental changes. AI can be used to improve or even radically change the process of designing digital solutions (Agner et al., 2020). In particular, AI has been hailed for providing many important possibilities, including the possibility of greater customization at scale, more precise analysis of the use of digital solutions, and aiding the creative process of designers (Oh et al., 2018).For this reason, it is important to continue to explore how these technologies can be developed and integrated into the design process in ways that facilitate and improve the work of designers.It is argued that the introduction of new digital tools such as AI into the design process brings about major changes in the nature of designers' work (O'Donovan et al., 2015) and that these changes bring about radical changes in ways of working, as well as some potentially negative and unintended consequences (Gaffney, 2017). The main problem encountered is that the use of such new and complex technologies to date means that designers and end users may have limited understanding of the ways in which these technologies can influence the design and thus also its outcome, i.e., the product/service.This is not necessarily a skills issue, but also relates to the fact that artificial intelligence is still a black box that still does not provide comprehensive explanations of its decision-making process (Asatiani et al., 2020).Most of the studies analyzed believe that design should not be merely automated by AI, with complete removal of the designer. It is believed that it should be an AI-supported process, a co-design, and that this is more likely to be used to automate only the most repetitive aspects of the process. Although AI-designer collaboration requires designers to enrich their skills, and many implementations of the artificial partner, the research collected shows that AI-designer interaction achieves better results than design processes in which AI is absent or the process is fully automated. Given this background, this paper investigates some aspects of designers' behavior during co-design. It was noted that designers establish ways of relating to the artificial partner that vary accordingly to how they can understand (or rather, believe they understand) the black box, i.e., the information processing procedure of AI. For example, the design process is made smooth when the designer can find ways to communicate its intentions to the machine in a way that facilitates its response, even if the content is complex. Through a review of the literature and direct observation of workshops where young designers test and use AI, some valuable observations and insights have been clustered.

Keywords: workshop, design tool, co-creation, Adaptive Human-machine cooperation (AHMC), generative AI

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004645

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