Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 2314 and online.
Yuzhe You, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
Designers require different design spaces across creative stages: broad during exploration, and targeted during refinement. Yet existing agent-driven tools assume a fixed or continuously expanding space, leaving designers to manage and navigate it themselves. Informed by a formative study with five designers, we propose an axis-centered workflow that adaptively broadens and narrows the design space to support structured exploration and refinement. We implemented this workflow in Surprise2Refine, a prototype that allows users to build and reshape an n×n design space through a set of axis-centered interactions as their creative intent evolves. A within-subjects study with 14 designers shows that Surprise2Refine enhances users’ sense of control, supports tracking of scaffolding paths, and improves the perceived creativity of design outcomes. We further distill design insights to guide future agent-assisted tools for creative scaffolding.
To attend this PhD seminar in person, please go to DC 2314. You can also attend virtually on Zoom.