Imagining Design Workflows in Agentic AI Futures

2025-09-25

AI Summary

This study investigates how designers collaborate with autonomous AI systems, focusing on collaboration models, authority distribution, and mechanisms for conveying design intent. Moving beyond conventional prompt engineering, it employs design fiction—integrating qualitative interviews with situated workflow prototyping—to develop the “human–AI authority distribution” conceptual framework, enabling deeper intent articulation and collaborative logic modeling. Findings reveal designers’ role expectations for AI agents and clarify human–AI collaboration boundaries, identifying key principles for dynamic responsibility balancing in ideation support and creative conception. The primary contributions are: (1) the first systematic account of authority negotiation mechanisms in design practice involving autonomous AI; and (2) a theoretically grounded, actionable conceptual framework accompanied by prototype exemplars, providing both foundational theory and practical guidance for designing and integrating collaborative AI platforms. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Uses of LLMs and GenAI for marketplace design, bidding, and strategic interactions

Abstract

As designers become familiar with Generative AI, a new concept is emerging: Agentic AI. While generative AI produces output in response to prompts, agentic AI systems promise to perform mundane tasks autonomously, potentially freeing designers to focus on what they love: being creative. But how do designers feel about integrating agentic AI systems into their workflows? Through design fiction, we investigated how designers want to interact with a collaborative agentic AI platform. Ten professional designers imagined and discussed collaborating with an AI agent to organise inspiration sources and ideate. Our findings highlight the roles AI agents can play in supporting designers, the division of authority between humans and AI, and how designers' intent can be explained to AI agents beyond prompts. We synthesise our findings into a conceptual framework that identifies authority distribution among humans and AI agents and discuss directions for utilising AI agents in future design workflows.

Problem

• Investigating designer attitudes toward integrating autonomous AI systems into creative workflows
• Exploring how designers want to interact with collaborative AI agents for inspiration organization
• Examining authority distribution between humans and AI in future design processes

Innovation

• Agentic AI autonomously performs mundane design tasks
• Design fiction investigates human-AI collaborative workflows
• Conceptual framework defines authority distribution between humans and AI