Balancing Automation with Designerly Autonomy: A UX-Driven Design Intervention

Abstract

This paper focuses on the unique, domain-specific requirements of industrial design tasks and workflows, and the tension between automation and creative autonomy from a user-centred perspective. The presented case is a design project carried out in a UX design course in an industrial design department. The project targeted effective designer-AI collaboration scenarios for specialised tasks, supported by interface designs balancing the benefits of AI automation with designers’ creative control. A mixed-method user study was conducted consisting of a questionnaire (n=105), workflow analysis (n=34) and generative interviews (n=18) to identify the perceived benefits of automation, interaction flaws as barriers to creative control in currently available generative AI tools, and designers’ expectations to enhance AI-supported industrial design workflows. The findings are enriched with novel design interventions from conceptual student projects carried out in the course. These interventions focus on familiar UI design features, enhanced designer-AI communication strategies, personalisation opportunities, transparent and reliable AI contribution, domain-specific automation support, and continuous design workflows. This study contributes to the field of human-AI interaction by proposing grounded, domain-specific interface design requirements and examples to inform future collaborative platform designs that optimise both AI automation and human creative control.

Keywords: Human-AI collaboration, human-AI interaction, generative AI, creative autonomy

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007262