Tag: interface design

Nudged by Design: AI Features and Researcher Agency in Everyday Research Tools

Interface-level cues and automated behaviors that subtly steer user decisions in purposeful ways.

Borami Kang
Graduate student
MFA Candidate in Design Research and Development
The Department of Design
The Ohio State University

Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models, is increasingly embedded as incremental features within familiar design research platforms such as Google, Miro, Notion, O’Reilly Media, and Zoom, rather than options. While promised as productivity enhancements, their effects on researcher attention, agency, and sense-making remain unexamined. Drawing on theories of behavioral nudging (Thaler &Sunstein), persuasive technology (Fogg), and human-centered AI (Shneiderman), this study examines these effects through the concept of AI nudges — interface-level cues and automated behaviors that subtly steer user decisions in purposeful ways. As AI becomes part of the background infrastructure of design research, understanding these micro-dynamics in different research activities is essential for both researchers managing their own practice and platform designers committed to responsible AI.

To study the micro-dynamics, the researcher conducted structured self-observation across five widely used platforms, performing core research tasks including literature search, synthesis, writing, reference review, and meeting documentation. Ten-minute sessions were recorded using screen capture, audio, and think-aloud protocols. Data were analyzed using Think-Feel-Say-Do (TFSD) empathy mapping at five time points per session and compared across platforms.

Across sessions, a consistent trajectory emerged: initial curiosity rapidly shifted to confusion, disorientation, and diminished control. Four themes were identified: (1) AI features appear as visual defaults rather than user-invoked options; (2) emotional states shift from engagement to fatigue as interventions accumulate; (3) automatic activation limits opportunities to pause or reverse actions; and (4) AI suggestions redirect inquiry away from original research intentions.

These findings suggest that current AI implementations reshape and frequently erode researcher agency not through explicit control, but through continuous, designed redirection. This paper contributes an analytical framework for examining AI-mediated research environments and proposes alignment between perceived and actual agency as a measurable criterion for responsible human-centered AI design.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.3: Virtual Summer on Friday, June 26, 2026.

Multi-modal Interface Design: Communicating Design Through Presentation and Review

Peter Lusch
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
College of Arts and Architecture
Penn State

Danielle Oprean
Post-Doctoral Research Scholar
Stuckeman Center for Design Computing
Penn State

Multi-modal visualization has long been considered important for design communication through representation and presentation, yet it has not been explored through an interface. In this presentation we discuss the outline for our test of use of a new interface designed to provide a multi-modal experience of design representations through the presentation and review processes. This interface is being developed for use in an immersive environments lab, a unique presentation space that allows for large-screen display and virtual reality. Before implementing a new interface, testing needs to be done to identify issues and perceptions of how well it works. We aim to test the feasibility of using a multi-modal interface with advanced-level undergraduate students in the design disciplines (architecture, landscape architecture, and graphic design) as a way for them to communicate design through presentation and review. In this presentation we talk about how usability testing allows for the results of actual use of an interface to feed back into improving the overall design. Specifically, we will provide an overview of our application of usability testing in design disciplines to address our hypothesis that being able to view different modalities of design representation at one time is more meaningful to communicate design both during presentation and in the review process. Success of the meaningfulness of the interface will be explored through the TAM model (Davis 1992) of usefulness, ease of use, and behavioral intention. We will also present the primary end point goals for this study, including our human factors study, and our self-report measurement of actual use of the multi-modal interface through questionnaires measuring usefulness, ease of use, and behavioral intention.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.