Research on the "Human-Machine Collaboration" Mode in AI-Aided Design and Its Influence on Designers' Creativity

Abstract

With the comprehensive popularization of generative artificial intelligence represented by Midjourney and Stable Diffusion in the design industry, AI has become an indispensable auxiliary tool for designers in conceptual sketching, scheme iteration, material rendering and visual output. However, the dual contradictions of AI stimulating creative inspiration and triggering design homogenization have become prominent pain points in the current design industry. Existing research mostly focuses on the final design output of AI-assisted creation, while ignoring the dynamic changes of designers’ whole creative process under human-machine collaborative working mode, lacking systematic research on the internal mechanism of creativity gain and loss. Taking graphic design, environmental design and product design practitioners as research objects, this paper takes generative AI tools as the core auxiliary carrier, defines the connotation and classification of "human-machine collaboration modes" in design work, and constructs a whole-process analysis framework of "pre-creation inspiration—mid-process scheme iteration—post-production optimization evaluation". This research reveals the positive driving and negative restriction mechanism of AI on designers’ creative thinking, solves the problem of creative homogenization caused by over-reliance on AI, provides theoretical reference for standardized human-machine collaborative design workflow, and forms a replicable practical paradigm for designers to give full play to independent creative ability under AI auxiliary environment.