Multimodal generative AI for conceptual design: Enabling text-based and sketch-based human-AI conversations

Baudoux G, Guo C, and Goucher-Lambert K. 2025. Proceedings of the Design Society: 25th International Conference on Engineering Design.

Abstract

Creative design could benefit from recent advances in AI, by providing inspirational images generation. While researchers have studied general benefits and limitations of existing text-to-image tools, this work investigates how to overcome these limitations and enable non-disruptive multimodal prompting for project-appropriate human-AI conversation. This paper presents the development of a system for human-AI co-creativity that supports text-based and sketch-based image generation through the elaboration of a complex prompt structure. The developed interface supports dialog interaction and the visualization of the respective contributions. Furthermore, this system constitutes a means for further studying human-AI interaction and how it varies in regard to conversation modality, between text and sketch.