HarmonyCut: Supporting Creative Chinese Paper-cutting Design with Form and Connotation Harmony

TL;DR

HarmonyCut is an AI-powered tool that supports Chinese paper-cutting design by aligning form with cultural connotation, addressing traditional erosion and knowledge gaps through structured guidance and creative exploration.

Contribution

The paper introduces HarmonyCut, a novel AI-based system that translates abstract design intentions into structured, culturally meaningful paper-cutting ideas, supported by formative and user studies.

Findings

HarmonyCut effectively provides relevant cultural knowledge for design.

It helps users generate diverse, culturally aligned paper-cutting designs.

User and expert evaluations confirm its usefulness and quality in supporting creative processes.

Abstract

Chinese paper-cutting, an Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), faces challenges from the erosion of traditional culture due to the prevalence of realism alongside limited public access to cultural elements. While generative AI can enhance paper-cutting design with its extensive knowledge base and efficient production capabilities, it often struggles to align content with cultural meaning due to users' and models' lack of comprehensive paper-cutting knowledge. To address these issues, we conducted a formative study (N=7) to identify the workflow and design space, including four core factors (Function, Subject Matter, Style, and Method of Expression) and a key element (Pattern). We then developed HarmonyCut, a generative AI-based tool that translates abstract intentions into creative and structured ideas. This tool facilitates the exploration of suggested related content (knowledge, works, and patterns), enabling users to select, combine, and adjust elements for creative paper-cutting design. A user study (N=16) and an expert evaluation (N=3) demonstrated that HarmonyCut effectively provided relevant knowledge, aiding the ideation of diverse paper-cutting designs and maintaining design quality within the design space to ensure alignment between form and cultural connotation.