arXiv subjects

Steven P. Dow

Publications and source records attributed to Steven P. Dow.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Disentangling Threads: Exploring the Potential of LLM-Supported Discussion Forum Analysis for Community Insight

Online discussion forums enable people from diverse backgrounds to share ideas, feedback, and perspectives. These organic discussions can help researchers understand communities' collective viewpoints, but insights are often difficult to uncover given their freeform reply structure. Large language models (LLMs) support qualitative text analysis but can misalign with researchers' analytical intent and miss key insights. To inform design considerations for forum sensemaking tools, we manually analyzed a forum discussion, synthesized an exploratory analysis framework from relevant literature, built a design probe, and interviewed 21 researchers to uncover perceived opportunities and barriers with LLM representations of collective discussions. We provide recommendations for community sensemaking tools to support flexible analytical goals grounded in raw user data and enable follow-up research processes, while balancing anonymous free expression with the desire for contextual information on commenters.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

VizCrit: Exploring Strategies for Displaying Computational Feedback in a Visual Design Tool

Visual design instructors often provide multi-modal feedback, mixing annotations with text. Prior theory emphasizes the importance of actionable feedback, where "actionability" lies on a spectrum--from surfacing relevant design concepts to suggesting concrete fixes. How might creativity tools implement annotations that support such feedback, and how does the actionability of feedback impact novices' process-related behaviors, perceptions of creativity, learning of design principles, and overall outcomes? We introduce VizCrit, a system for providing computational feedback that supports the actionability spectrum, realized through algorithmic issue detection and visual annotation generation. In a between-subjects study (N=36), novices revised a design under one of three conditions: textbook-based, awareness-centered, or solution-centered feedback. We found that solution-centered feedback led to fewer design issues and higher self-perceived creativity compared with textbook-based feedback, although expert ratings on creativity showed no significant differences. We discuss the implications for AI in Creativity Support Tools, including the potential of calibrating feedback actionability to help novices balance productivity with learning, growth, and developing design awareness.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

StoryEnsemble: Enabling Dynamic Exploration & Iteration in the Design Process with AI and Forward-Backward Propagation

Design processes involve exploration, iteration, and movement across interconnected stages such as persona creation, problem framing, solution ideation, and prototyping. However, time and resource constraints often hinder designers from exploring broadly, collecting feedback, and revisiting earlier assumptions-making it difficult to uphold core design principles in practice. To better understand these challenges, we conducted a formative study with 15 participants-comprised of UX practitioners, students, and instructors. Based on the findings, we developed StoryEnsemble, a tool that integrates AI into a node-link interface and leverages forward and backward propagation to support dynamic exploration and iteration across the design process. A user study with 10 participants showed that StoryEnsemble enables rapid, multi-directional iteration and flexible navigation across design stages. This work advances our understanding of how AI can foster more iterative design practices by introducing novel interactions that make exploration and iteration more fluid, accessible, and engaging.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

DesignWeaver: Dimensional Scaffolding for Text-to-Image Product Design

Generative AI has enabled novice designers to quickly create professional-looking visual representations for product concepts. However, novices have limited domain knowledge that could constrain their ability to write prompts that effectively explore a product design space. To understand how experts explore and communicate about design spaces, we conducted a formative study with 12 experienced product designers and found that experts -- and their less-versed clients -- often use visual references to guide co-design discussions rather than written descriptions. These insights inspired DesignWeaver, an interface that helps novices generate prompts for a text-to-image model by surfacing key product design dimensions from generated images into a palette for quick selection. In a study with 52 novices, DesignWeaver enabled participants to craft longer prompts with more domain-specific vocabularies, resulting in more diverse, innovative product designs. However, the nuanced prompts heightened participants' expectations beyond what current text-to-image models could deliver. We discuss implications for AI-based product design support tools.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

ReviewFlow: Intelligent Scaffolding to Support Academic Peer Reviewing

Peer review is a cornerstone of science. Research communities conduct peer reviews to assess contributions and to improve the overall quality of science work. Every year, new community members are recruited as peer reviewers for the first time. How could technology help novices adhere to their community's practices and standards for peer reviewing? To better understand peer review practices and challenges, we conducted a formative study with 10 novices and 10 experts. We found that many experts adopt a workflow of annotating, note-taking, and synthesizing notes into well-justified reviews that align with community standards. Novices lack timely guidance on how to read and assess submissions and how to structure paper reviews. To support the peer review process, we developed ReviewFlow -- an AI-driven workflow that scaffolds novices with contextual reflections to critique and annotate submissions, in-situ knowledge support to assess novelty, and notes-to-outline synthesis to help align peer reviews with community expectations. In a within-subjects experiment, 16 inexperienced reviewers wrote reviews in two conditions: using ReviewFlow and using a baseline environment with minimal guidance. With ReviewFlow, participants produced more comprehensive reviews, identifying more pros and cons. While participants appreciated the streamlined process support from ReviewFlow, they also expressed concerns about using AI as part of the scientific review process. We discuss the implications of using AI to scaffold the peer review process on scientific work and beyond.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Graphologue: Exploring Large Language Model Responses with Interactive Diagrams

Large language models (LLMs) have recently soared in popularity due to their ease of access and the unprecedented ability to synthesize text responses to diverse user questions. However, LLMs like ChatGPT present significant limitations in supporting complex information tasks due to the insufficient affordances of the text-based medium and linear conversational structure. Through a formative study with ten participants, we found that LLM interfaces often present long-winded responses, making it difficult for people to quickly comprehend and interact flexibly with various pieces of information, particularly during more complex tasks. We present Graphologue, an interactive system that converts text-based responses from LLMs into graphical diagrams to facilitate information-seeking and question-answering tasks. Graphologue employs novel prompting strategies and interface designs to extract entities and relationships from LLM responses and constructs node-link diagrams in real-time. Further, users can interact with the diagrams to flexibly adjust the graphical presentation and to submit context-specific prompts to obtain more information. Utilizing diagrams, Graphologue enables graphical, non-linear dialogues between humans and LLMs, facilitating information exploration, organization, and comprehension.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Freeform Templates: Combining Freeform Curation with Structured Templates

Online whiteboards are becoming a popular way to facilitate collaborative design work, providing a free-form environment to curate ideas. However, as templates are increasingly being used to scaffold contributions from non-experts designers, it is crucial to understand their impact on the creative process. In this paper, we present the results from a study with 114 students in a large introductory design course. Our results confirm prior findings that templates benefit students by providing a starting point, a shared process, and the ability to access their own work from previous steps. While prior research has criticized templates for being too rigid, we discovered that using templates within a free-form environment resulted in visual patterns of free-form curation where concepts were spatially organized, clustered, color-coded, and connected using arrows and lines. We introduce the concept of "Free-form Templates" to illustrate how templates and free-form curation can be synergistic.

cs.HC↗