Conference Agenda

This exploration investigates how common interaction framings with generative AI shape design research practice, specifically reflecting on the following hypotheses: 

• Personification as a variable: Does anthropomorphising and addressing AI as a “persona” (social actor) versus as an “impersonal tool” change designers’ willingness to challenge outputs, attribute authorship, and maintain accountability?  (Hsieh & Lee, 2024) 
• Modes of co-intelligence: How do different “co-intelligence modes” (e. g., AI as coach, co-worker, creative partner or tool) alter ideation trajectories, decision points, and the distribution of agency in design work? (Mollick, 2024; Doshi & Hauser, 2024). 
• After-AI practice: What remains of a design workflow when AI is restricted or removed, and what tactics help designers “unmake” AI’s influence while preserving designerly judgement? (Choi, 2024; Zhang, 2025). 

The session has three main objectives:  

• First, it aims to produce a comparative, practice-based account of how different framings of generative AI reshape design thinking, authorship, and accountability during co-creation.  
• Second, it seeks to generate reusable research artefacts – such as templates, prompt protocols, agency & accountability maps, and co-/unmaking pipeline maps – that other researchers and practitioners can adopt, critique, and extend.  
• Third, it is designed to bridge affirmation and critique by making visible what AI enables in design work, what it curtails or distorts, where it fails, and how its influence can be decentred through explicit “unmaking” practices.