Understanding inspiration: Insights into how designers discover inspirational stimuli using an AI-enabled platform
Open accessAbstract
Throughout the design process, designers encounter diverse stimuli that influence their work. This influence is particularly notable during idea generation processes that are augmented by novel design support tools that assist in inspiration discovery. However, fundamental questions remain regarding why and how interactions afforded by these tools impact design behaviors. This work explores how designers search for inspirational stimuli using an AI-enabled multi-modal search platform, which supports queries by text and non-text-based inputs. Student and professional designers completed a think-aloud design exploration task using this platform to search for stimuli to inspire idea generation. We identify expertise and search modality as factors influencing design exploration, including the frequency and framing of searches, and the evaluation and utility of search results.
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GenAI leverages large data to provide a natural language interface for idea generation, promising to be a solution for designers to overcome issues of lack of originality.
“GenAI leverages large data to provide a natural language interface for idea generation, promising to be a solution for designers to overcome issues of lack of originality [40], applied in domains like fashion [34] and design sketching [5, 29].”
From Sketchar: Supporting Character Design and Illustration Prototyping Using Generative AI (2024) · cites this paper as [40]
Cites
Exploratory search: from finding to understanding
Marchionini, G. (2006) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/1121949.1121979 · Cited by 1,506 · see citing works
Jansson, D. G., & Smith, S. M. (1991) · Design Studies · doi:10.1016/0142-694x(91)90003-f · Cited by 1,087 · see citing works
Athukorala, K., Głowacka, D., Jacucci, G., Oulasvirta, A., & Vreeken, J. (2016) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.23617 · Cited by 150 · see citing works
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Sketchar: Supporting Character Design and Illustration Prototyping Using Generative AI
Ling, L., Chen, X., Wen, R., Li, T. J.-J., & LC, R. (2024) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3677102 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
“China has the world’s largest gaming market, but government regulations and stigmatization have sometimes hindered local game development.”
- Authors
- Kwon, E., Rao, V., & Goucher-Lambert, K.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Goucher-Lambert, Kosa
- Venue
- Design Studies
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2023-09
- Volume
- 88
- Pages
- 101202
- ISSN
- 0142-694X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4382132863
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 5.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Design Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2145432)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Design Education and Practice
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Digital Media and Visual Art
- Keywords
- design inspiration, idea generation, multimodal retrieval, design exploration, designer expertise, search result evaluation, design support tools
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