Vision

My lab, Expressive Computing Lab., explores the design and creation of interactive systems that harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to enable more expressive, creative, and emotionally engaging interactions and experiences between humans and machines to augment human creativity. My vision is to be a pioneer and evangelist for the ‘creative use of AI,’ where AI and design are seamlessly integrated to enable new forms of human expression, facilitate human-AI co-creation, and explore the design implications of AI-mediated communication and creative works. Under this theme, I seek to inspire and empower designers and researchers to embrace AI as a transformative force for innovation and cultural impact by disseminating my research through a variety of channels, from academic papers at high-profile conferences to design awards, exhibitions and performances.

My research topics explore AI as an emerging design tool, material, and medium, harnessing its capabilities to enhance and transform the design process and create creative interactions and intelligent interfaces. By investigating AI from a design perspective based on human-centered AI principles and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research methods, I aim to bring unique considerations and approaches that differ from traditional AI and HCI research.

Researching AI from a design perspective is crucial because it brings a unique set of considerations and approaches that differ from traditional AI and HCI research. While conventional AI research usually focuses on technical advancement and optimization, my design-oriented AI research prioritizes human-centered values, aesthetic sensibilities, and cultural contexts. By grounding my research in design principles, I ensure that a deep understanding of human needs, desires, and experiences guides the development and application of AI. This approach is particularly impactful because it shows how future design research can bridge the gap between the technical capabilities of AI and the real-world contexts in which it is deployed, leading to the creation of AI systems that are not only functional but also meaningful, engaging, and socially responsible.

My research vision and philosophy stand out from traditional AI or HCI research in several ways. While core AI research often focuses on advancing the technical capabilities of AI models, my approach puts human needs, values, and creativity at the center. I am not just interested in what AI can do but in how it can be used to support and empower human designers in their work. Similarly, while traditional HCI research often emphasizes the analysis of human behavior and the evaluation of interfaces’ usability, my research goes beyond this by imagining AI as a fundamental building block of interactive systems. I am not interested in developing interfaces that simply apply AI but in exploring how AI can transform the very nature of experience in terms of emerging design tools, materials, and media. All my previous research outcomes demonstrate a strong association with this research direction.

As a design tool, AI can augment the designer’s creativity by generating ideas and variations, facilitating rapid prototyping, optimizing solutions based on data, automating routine tasks, enabling collaboration, and enhancing accessibility. However, it is crucial to emphasize that AI should support and augment human designers, not replace them. The designer’s expertise, empathy, and critical thinking remain central to guiding the use of AI meaningfully and ethically.

For example, in “Understanding Fashion Designers’ Behavior Using Generative AI for Early-Stage Concept Ideation and Revision” (ADR, 2024) and “Human-AI Co-Creation in Fashion Design Ideation and Sketching: An Empirical Study” (CVPR Workshop, 2024), I explore how AI can be used as a design tool to support fashion designers in the creative process, enhancing concept ideation and sketching from the very designer’s perspective. These studies demonstrate how AI can fundamentally augment and transform the design process by prosing new inspiration and collaboration processes for human-AI co-creation.

As a design material, AI can be seamlessly integrated into the fabric of our interactive systems, enabling more intelligent, more adaptive, and more engaging interfaces for positive behavior changes or smart experiences than ever before. In this case, designers should consider the ethical implications and potential risks, such as privacy concerns, biases, and unintended consequences. Designing with AI as a material requires close collaboration between designers, AI experts, data scientists, and users to ensure transparency, explainability, and alignment with human values.

For instance, “Designing Interfaces for Text-to-Image Prompt Engineering Using Stable Diffusion Models: a Human-AI Interaction Approach” (IASDR, 2023) demonstrates how AI can be used as a design material and why designers try to adopt generative AIs to the design of more intelligent and expressive design tools. These studies reveal AI’s potential to transform how designers interact with and leverage AI in their creative work by investigating prompt engineering and concept visualization processes through interviews and a data-driven approach. Another example is “Expanding the Design Space of Vision-based Interactive Systems for Group Dance Practice” (DIS, 2024) and “CheerUp: A Real-time Ambient Visualization of Cheerleading Pose Similarity” (IUI, 2023). In this research series, my students and I explore how AI can be used to expand the design space of interactive dance practice systems from the established context of single-user practice to a multi-user, group-based scenario focused on feedback and communication, supported by various cutting-edge AI models through the speed-dating method and technical probe. Furthermore, my research investigates how AI can enhance and transform various aspects of the design process, from music composition in ” Representing the Timbre of Traditional Musical Instruments Based on Contemporary Instrumental Samples Using DDSP” (UIST, 2023) to interactive learning systems in “Designing an Intelligent Learning System for Practicing the Oboe Embouchure” (UBICOMP Workshop, 2022). These studies demonstrate the versatility of AI as a design tool and its potential to address cultural-related problems as a new material for design.

As a design media, AI can enable new forms of artistic expression, facilitate collaboration between artists and AI, explore the cultural implications of AI, create interactive and immersive experiences, and generate new forms of narrative and storytelling. To pursue this, artists and designers should be aware of the potential biases, stereotypes, or power dynamics that AI might reproduce or amplify and strive to create works that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Using AI as a design media requires a deep understanding of both AI’s technical capabilities and limitations and the cultural and historical contexts in which these practices are situated. My research also explores this dimension. “Towards a Non-Fungible Experience: The Emerging Media Art Performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (SIGGRAPH Asia, 2022) and “Particling Night: The Design of an Emerging Media Artwork as a Tool for Reflection on Superficiality of Social Media” (IASDR, 2023) and two International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA, 2019) papers are examples of future artists and designers using AI to create interactive and thought-provoking experiences, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression and engaging diverse audiences through questions for society.

Across these three aspects, embracing AI from a design field requires a fundamental shift in the design process. Designers must adopt an interdisciplinary and agile approach, collaborating closely with engineers, scientists, and users to define desired AI capabilities, gather relevant data, and iteratively test and refine AI pipelines and interactions. This approach strongly emphasizes user feedback, ethical considerations, and the alignment of AI with human values and needs. Designers should be able to enhance their creative process, create novel interactions and interfaces, and push the boundaries of artistic expression and cultural production by using AI as a design tool, material, and media. Integrating AI into design practices can ultimately transform how we design, interact with, and experience the world around us. Just as the field of design has evolved with the development of human society, such a transformation must be approached with the heart and eye of a designer, with critical yet provocative reflection, and with a deep commitment to ethical and socially responsible practices to sustain design processes, methods, and practices.

In conclusion, my visions and philosophy in researching AI, from the design-centered perspective, as an emerging design tool, material, and medium contribute to the advancement of the field and merit dissemination through various channels. By publishing in top-notch conferences and journals, receiving recognition through prestigious international design awards, and engaging diverse audiences through exhibitions and performances, I believe we demonstrate our research’s academic rigor, design excellence, and practical impact. This comprehensive approach to research dissemination can position our lab and researchers as pioneers in the field, pushing the boundaries of what is possible at the intersection of AI and design while ensuring that my contributions are grounded in human-centered values and socially responsible practices.