Current AI tools for interaction design are commonly conveyed as productivity enhancers, promising speed, automation, and ideation at scale. However, many of these tools reproduce the same interaction model: a conversational interface wrapped around generative capabilities. This risks flattening design work into prompt-based production, while neglecting the situated, collaborative, reflective, and material practices through which design actually happens. This workshop asks what kinds of AI tools designers genuinely need, and how such tools could be conceptualized, evaluated, and built differently.
The workshop took place on the 4th of October (Sunday), 2026 from 14:00 to 17:30.
Introduction and Case Presentations. (30 min) Organizers will briefly introduce the workshop’s aims, expected outcomes, methodological orientation, and the experimental tools we developed or studied. Participants will then give short lightning presentations of their submitted cases, sharing an AI tool, prototype, workflow, or research observation from their practice, along with key dimensions: the related design activity, the role of AI, the role of the designer, and observed limitations.
Critique Phase: Cases and Needs. (45 min) Participants will be divided into small groups of three to five. Drawing on the cases shared in the previous activity, each group will conduct a structured need-finding exercise (Patnaik, 1999), critically analyzing the cases to surface patterns, assumptions, and tensions in how current AI tools frame design work, and then articulating the unmet, latent, and workaround-driven designer needs that emerge from this analysis.
Need Presentations. (15 min) Each group will briefly present the identified needs to the full room. We will facilitate a short cross-group discussion to surface recurring themes, points of tension, and shared priorities. The consolidated needs from this discussion will form the input for the ideation activity that follows.
Coffee Break. (30 min.)
Fantasy Phase: Ideation. (60 min) Participants will collaboratively generate design ideas in response to the consolidated needs. They will be encouraged to range across speculative, near-term, and provocative concepts, and to articulate for each idea what need it addresses, what role it assigns to the designer, and what role it assigns to AI. Ideas will be captured in lightweight formats such as sketches or short written descriptions suitable for sharing with the full room.
Implementation-Oriented Synthesis: Idea Presentations and Closing Discussion. (30 min) The closing discussion will review the workshop’s two outcomes, the articulated needs and the resulting design ideas, and consider how they can be developed further, including formalizing the need set as a research agenda, refining selected ideas as collaborative follow-up work, preparing a joint paper, and strengthening connections within the consortium.
We invite researchers, practitioners, educators, students, and industry professionals interested in AI-supported interaction design to participate in the workshop. We ask participants to submit a short statement of approximately 300 words, describing their background and motivation for joining the workshop and briefly introducing an AI tool, prototype, workflow, research case, teaching case, or design-practice observation they would like to discuss. The submitted cases will be used as starting points for the workshop activities. We welcome examples involving commercial AI tools, research prototypes, experimental workflows, organizational experiences, failed attempts, ethical concerns, or speculative cases. We are particularly interested in contributions that reveal tensions between current AI tools and the needs of interaction design practice, including questions of designer agency, professional judgment, accountability, collaboration, automation, design rationale, and the limitations of current AI tools.
Please register via the NordiCHI 2026 Website.
Pavel Okopnyi, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bergen. His research interests include human-AI interaction, AI applications, and tools for professional creative work and interactive design.
Willem van der Maden, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Procedural Expressions Lab (PXL) at the IT University of Copenhagen. His research examines people’s localized, qualitative experiences with AI and uses these insights to shape system-level metrics and improve AI design.
Frode Guribye, a professor of information science. His focus is on HCI and the social implications of information and communication technologies. He has wide experience in research and innovation projects across areas such as mental health and journalism. He is a PI for the Responsible AI in Interaction Design Practice project.
Ville Paananen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at IHTE Research Group on Human-Centered Technology at Tampere University. His interdisciplinary research focuses on how new technologies relate to human issues such as meaning, context, and space. His work is situated in the domains of HCI, architecture, and philosophy of technology.
Matilda Kalving is a Doctoral Researcher at Tampere University in Finland, focusing on Human-AI collaboration in creative tasks. She is a member of the IHTE Research Group on Human-Centered Technology and the TAUCHI Research Center.
Miroslav Bachinski is an Associate Professor of HCI at the University of Bergen. His research focuses on the design and development of technologies and interaction methods for post-desktop HCI.
Simone Grassini is a Professor of psychology at the University of Bergen. His interdisciplinary research spans cognitive psychology, environmental neuroscience, and HCI, focusing on how individuals engage with both natural and artificial environments.
Kaisa Väänänen is a Professor of human-technology interaction at Tampere University. Her research interests cover user experience and participatory technology design, with emphasis on digital services advancing sustainability and human-centered AI design for future technologies and human practices. Kaisa is an ACM Distinguished Member.
Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose is an Associate Professor in HCI at Aarhus University. His research focuses on user interface systems, collaborative systems, participatory design, and malleable software.
Jens Emil Sloth Grønbæk is an Assistant Professor in HCI at the Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses on mixed reality telepresence, multimodal interfaces, and blended collaboration in mobile and distributed work settings.
Jonas Ivarsson is a Professor of informatics at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on the role of technologies in the development of knowledge, competence, and professional practice, with a background in cognitive science, communication studies, and education.
Jichen Zhu is a Professor in the HCI and Design Section at the IT University of Copenhagen. She directs the Human-AI Interaction Lab (HAIL) and leads the UX Design Specialization, focusing on AI/ML user experience. Her work lies at the intersection of HCI, interaction and game design, and AI, with an emphasis on novel human-AI interactions, especially in personalized games for learning and health. She is a co-editor of the Software Studies Book Series at MIT Press and serves on the board of the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games (SASDG).