Exploring Collaboration Patterns and Strategies in Human-AI Co-creation through the Lens of Agency: A Scoping Review of the Top-tier HCI Literature

TL;DR

This scoping review analyzes how agency manifests in human-AI co-creation within HCI, providing a framework, catalog, and map to guide future research and system design.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive synthesis of agency configurations and control mechanisms in HCI/CSCW literature over 20 years.

Findings

Developed an integrated theoretical framework for agency patterns.

Created a catalog of control mechanisms for agency implementation.

Mapped agency configurations to diverse co-creative practices.

Abstract

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly becomes an active collaborator in co-creation, understanding the distribution and dynamic of agency is paramount. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) perspective is crucial for this analysis, as it uniquely reveals the interaction dynamics and specific control mechanisms that dictate how agency manifests in practice. Despite this importance, a systematic synthesis mapping agency configurations and control mechanisms within the HCI/CSCW literature is lacking. Addressing this gap, we reviewed 134 papers from top-tier HCI/CSCW venues (e.g., CHI, UIST, CSCW) over the past 20 years. This review yields four primary contributions: (1) an integrated theoretical framework structuring agency patterns, control mechanisms, and interaction contexts, (2) a comprehensive operational catalog of control mechanisms detailing how agency is implemented; (3) an actionable cross-context map linking agency configurations to diverse co-creative practices; and (4) grounded implications and guidance for future CSCW research and the design of co-creative systems, addressing aspects like trust and ethics.