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Main Authors: Lin, Pei-Ying, Heij, Julie, Borst, Iris, Joosten, Britt, Andersen, Kristina, IJsselsteijn, Wijnand
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12018
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author Lin, Pei-Ying
Heij, Julie
Borst, Iris
Joosten, Britt
Andersen, Kristina
IJsselsteijn, Wijnand
author_facet Lin, Pei-Ying
Heij, Julie
Borst, Iris
Joosten, Britt
Andersen, Kristina
IJsselsteijn, Wijnand
contents Amidst the emergence of powerful intelligent technologies such as LLMs and text-to-image AIs that promise to enhance creative processes, designers face the challenges of remaining empowered and creative while working with these foreign digital partners. While generative AIs offer versatile, informative, and occasionally poetic outcomes, their lack of embodied knowledge presents an even greater challenge to designers in gaining fruitful outcomes, such as in the field of Digital Craftsmanship. In this project, three designers embarked on a three-month experimental journey with an intention to co-create with Google's LLM as a potential intelligent partner to investigate how it will influence the designers' creativity. We found that a power dynamic of agencies exists between the LLM and the designer, in which the designer can easily lose their creative agency. Regaining the designer's creative agency involves introspection into their own creative process, a structural understanding of the specific emerging technology involved, and deliberate adjustments to the dynamics of the human-technology relationship. We propose paying attention to the designer's inner world and parties of agencies when engaging with emerging intelligent technologies through three aspects: the sensitivity towards a creative process as cognitive activities; the active investigation into specific technology's capability; and the adjustment towards an appropriate working relationship between the designer and the emerging technology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_12018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Intent of Collaboration: On Agencies between Designers and Emerging (Intelligent) Technologies
Lin, Pei-Ying
Heij, Julie
Borst, Iris
Joosten, Britt
Andersen, Kristina
IJsselsteijn, Wijnand
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Emerging Technologies
I.2; J.5
Amidst the emergence of powerful intelligent technologies such as LLMs and text-to-image AIs that promise to enhance creative processes, designers face the challenges of remaining empowered and creative while working with these foreign digital partners. While generative AIs offer versatile, informative, and occasionally poetic outcomes, their lack of embodied knowledge presents an even greater challenge to designers in gaining fruitful outcomes, such as in the field of Digital Craftsmanship. In this project, three designers embarked on a three-month experimental journey with an intention to co-create with Google's LLM as a potential intelligent partner to investigate how it will influence the designers' creativity. We found that a power dynamic of agencies exists between the LLM and the designer, in which the designer can easily lose their creative agency. Regaining the designer's creative agency involves introspection into their own creative process, a structural understanding of the specific emerging technology involved, and deliberate adjustments to the dynamics of the human-technology relationship. We propose paying attention to the designer's inner world and parties of agencies when engaging with emerging intelligent technologies through three aspects: the sensitivity towards a creative process as cognitive activities; the active investigation into specific technology's capability; and the adjustment towards an appropriate working relationship between the designer and the emerging technology.
title An Intent of Collaboration: On Agencies between Designers and Emerging (Intelligent) Technologies
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Emerging Technologies
I.2; J.5
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12018