I Can Embrace and Avoid Vagueness Myself: Supporting the Design Process by Balancing Vagueness through Text-to-Image Generative AI

TL;DR

This paper explores how to strategically manage vagueness in design using an AI tool, CLAY, which helps designers balance embracing and avoiding vagueness to enhance creativity and efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces CLAY, an interactive system that balances vagueness through iterative prompt refinement, improving design outcomes and process efficiency for fashion designers.

Findings

CLAY reduced design time for users.

CLAY expanded creative possibilities.

Designers effectively balanced vagueness using CLAY.

Abstract

This study examines the role of vagueness in the design process and its strategic management for the effective human-AI interaction. While vagueness in the generation of design ideas promotes diverse interpretations and prevents fixation, excessive vagueness can lead to scattered results. Designers attempt to use image search tools or generative AIs (e.g., Dall-E) for their work but often fail to achieve satisfactory results because the level of vagueness is not properly managed in these technologies. In this work, we identified how designers coordinate vagueness in their design process and applied key components of the process to the design of CLAY, an interactive system that balances vagueness through iterative prompt refinement by integrating the strengths of text-to-image generative AI. Results from our user study with 10 fashion designers showed that CLAY effectively supported their design process, reducing design time, and expanding creative possibilities compared to their existing practice, by allowing them to both embrace and avoid vagueness as needed. Our study highlights the importance of identifying key characteristics of the target user and domain, and exploring ways to incorporate them into the design of an AI-based interactive tool.