How Designers Envision Value-Oriented AI Design Concepts with Generative AI

TL;DR

This study explores how designers use generative AI to envision value-driven solutions, revealing their reflective practices, value tensions, harm recognition, and anticipatory judgment in AI-enabled design.

Contribution

It extends Schon's reflection-in-action framework to AI design, highlighting designers' harm-centered reasoning and implications for AI tool redesign.

Findings

Designers engage in reciprocal reflection-in-action with AI.

Multi-level value tensions emerge across tools, designers, and concepts.

Designers prioritize harm recognition over positive value articulation.

Abstract

As AI integrates into design practice, designers increasingly use generative AI tools to envision AI-enabled solutions, positioning AI as both design tool and design material. This dual role creates recursive value tensions distinct from traditional design work. We engaged 18 designers in a concept envisioning activity and interviews to understand how they navigate values and recognize potential harms in this context. Our analysis reveals that (i) designers engage in reciprocal reflection-in-action with AI; (ii) this process surfaces multi-level value tensions across tool, designer, and concept; (iii) designers demonstrate greater attunement to harm recognition as a primary design signal than to articulating positive value fulfillment; and (iv) designers exercise anticipatory judgment through meta-design reasoning about how tool assumptions risk propagating into designed concepts and future use contexts. We extend Schon's reflection-in-action framework and discuss implications for redesigning AI-mediated design tools, supporting harm-centered reasoning, and positioning design as foundational to AI development.