AIdeation: Designing a Human-AI Collaborative Ideation System for Concept Designers

TL;DR

AIdeation is a human-AI collaborative system designed to support concept designers in the entertainment industry by enhancing early ideation through flexible image searching and recombination, improving creativity and efficiency.

Contribution

This paper introduces AIdeation, a novel AI-assisted ideation tool tailored for concept designers, based on a formative study and validated through user and field studies.

Findings

AIdeation significantly improved creativity and efficiency (p<.01).

Designers reported higher satisfaction with AIdeation.

Two studios continued using AIdeation in commercial projects.

Abstract

Concept designers in the entertainment industry create highly detailed, often imaginary environments for movies, games, and TV shows. Their early ideation phase requires intensive research, brainstorming, visual exploration, and combination of various design elements to form cohesive designs. However, existing AI tools focus on image generation from user specifications, lacking support for the unique needs and complexity of concept designers' workflows. Through a formative study with 12 professional designers, we captured their workflows and identified key requirements for AI-assisted ideation tools. Leveraging these insights, we developed AIdeation to support early ideation by brainstorming design concepts with flexible searching and recombination of reference images. A user study with 16 professional designers showed that AIdeation significantly enhanced creativity, ideation efficiency, and satisfaction (all p<.01) compared to current tools and workflows. A field study with 4 studios for 1 week provided insights into AIdeation's benefits and limitations in real-world projects. After the completion of the field study, two studios, covering films, television, and games, have continued to use AIdeation in their commercial projects to date, further validating AIdeation's improvement in ideation quality and efficiency.