Abstract

Our research vision is to stimulate design ideation through the creative power of analogical reasoning with the automatic delivery of impactful stimuli; sending project-appropriate inspiration to automatically render images during the preliminary stages of design. Recent advances in artificial intelligence opens this up. However, many questions remain about how designers may engage with such interactions. This paper employs a Wizard of Oz protocol to immerse 9 architects for a 4 hours residential building design task. Collected data is analyzed to study questions such as : what elements are extracted, from which relevant images, with what need, and when and how are they reintegrated into design? Our results show that designers use the “AI generated” images for inspiration and to evaluate initial ideas. They extract general form related attributes and more detailed function related ones, which they reintegrate by direct transposition. Designers favor general ambiences images over design details or plans.