Abstract
The concept of Design Attitude extends the inquiry of Design Thinking beyond procedural stages into how designers internalize, negotiate, and perform design values—making it a unique framework for looking into the influence of AIGC on designers and design students. In the light of such argument, this study investigates how the usage of AIGC affects the Design Attitude of product design students. Building on Mich lewskis framework of Design Attitude, this research combines structured questionnaires and focus group interviews to investigate core research questions: Does the usage of AIGC influence product design students' Design Attitude in terms of each dimension? If so, how are these influences manifested? To answer the first question, a two-stage coding methodology was conducted, which mapped 72 specific usage descriptions by large language models (LLMs) in the first stage and 18 identical functional roles of AIGC by 3 researchers in the second stage. To answer the second question, six typical scenarios of how the usage of AIGC influence product design students’ design attitude were profiled and discussed. In the conclusion, the authors argued that AIGC exerts complex dual influences across all five dimensions of Design Attitude, simultaneously empowering students’ abilities while potentially eroding critical thinking and design capabilities. The results show that while AIGC tools expand ability boundaries, facilitate creative exploration, and accelerate iteration processes, they also risk diminishing deep analytical thinking, fostering tool dependency, and marginalizing essential physical exploration modalities. The findings advocate for maintaining a critical and reflective approach to AIGC adoption, balancing its empowering potential with deliberate preservation of human capabilities in technologically augmented design environment, thereby providing reflective research materials for future AIGC-oriented design education and human-AI collaborative design practice.
Keywords
Design thinking; Design attitude; Generative AI; Product design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1056
Citation
Hei, J., Liu, Z.,and Chai, J.(2025) Optimistic while cautious: an investigation and reflection on AIGC usage influence on Design Attitude of product design students, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1056
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 5 - Design Thinking
Optimistic while cautious: an investigation and reflection on AIGC usage influence on Design Attitude of product design students
The concept of Design Attitude extends the inquiry of Design Thinking beyond procedural stages into how designers internalize, negotiate, and perform design values—making it a unique framework for looking into the influence of AIGC on designers and design students. In the light of such argument, this study investigates how the usage of AIGC affects the Design Attitude of product design students. Building on Mich lewskis framework of Design Attitude, this research combines structured questionnaires and focus group interviews to investigate core research questions: Does the usage of AIGC influence product design students' Design Attitude in terms of each dimension? If so, how are these influences manifested? To answer the first question, a two-stage coding methodology was conducted, which mapped 72 specific usage descriptions by large language models (LLMs) in the first stage and 18 identical functional roles of AIGC by 3 researchers in the second stage. To answer the second question, six typical scenarios of how the usage of AIGC influence product design students’ design attitude were profiled and discussed. In the conclusion, the authors argued that AIGC exerts complex dual influences across all five dimensions of Design Attitude, simultaneously empowering students’ abilities while potentially eroding critical thinking and design capabilities. The results show that while AIGC tools expand ability boundaries, facilitate creative exploration, and accelerate iteration processes, they also risk diminishing deep analytical thinking, fostering tool dependency, and marginalizing essential physical exploration modalities. The findings advocate for maintaining a critical and reflective approach to AIGC adoption, balancing its empowering potential with deliberate preservation of human capabilities in technologically augmented design environment, thereby providing reflective research materials for future AIGC-oriented design education and human-AI collaborative design practice.