Abstract
The use of AIGC to assist in design is increasingly common in industry and classrooms. Designers delegate critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making to AI, leading to mental inertia and blind obedience, making learners’ critical thinking crucial. This study explores how AIGC-aided E6 design thinking affects beginner designers’ critical thinking via controlled experiments. Beginners conducted "future travel products" concept design, generating sketches on LiblibAI, with the E6 design thinking scale as an intervention. Data were collected via repeated generation, retesting, and interviews. Results: 58.82% of the scale items showed improved critical thinking, 71.43% of the works were rated better by experts, and 57.14% of beginners formed "question-iteration" patterns. Thus, AIGC-aided E6 design thinking promotes beginners’ critical thinking. The study proposes future AIGC tools integrating controllability, cognitive guidance, and process iteration to aid design and foster critical thinking.
Keywords
Critical Thinking, Conceptual Design, Design Thinking, AIGC, Sketch, Controlled Experiments
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.634
Citation
Ge, P., and Fan*, F. (2026) Promoting the Development of Critical Thinking Among Design Novices in AIGC-Aided Design Processes, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.634
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Promoting the Development of Critical Thinking Among Design Novices in AIGC-Aided Design Processes
The use of AIGC to assist in design is increasingly common in industry and classrooms. Designers delegate critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making to AI, leading to mental inertia and blind obedience, making learners’ critical thinking crucial. This study explores how AIGC-aided E6 design thinking affects beginner designers’ critical thinking via controlled experiments. Beginners conducted "future travel products" concept design, generating sketches on LiblibAI, with the E6 design thinking scale as an intervention. Data were collected via repeated generation, retesting, and interviews. Results: 58.82% of the scale items showed improved critical thinking, 71.43% of the works were rated better by experts, and 57.14% of beginners formed "question-iteration" patterns. Thus, AIGC-aided E6 design thinking promotes beginners’ critical thinking. The study proposes future AIGC tools integrating controllability, cognitive guidance, and process iteration to aid design and foster critical thinking.