Democratizing Design Through Generative AI.

Conversations around public spaces are fractured and often circle around designs and their implications for the space. Contributing to this problem is the fact that people often talk past one another. Recent advances in generative AI may help to democratize this process of designing for public spaces and enable people to meaningfully converse with one another. Here, we develop a platform that asks users to submit a photo and story about a place in their community that they cherish. The system then pairs each user with a target person whose preferences conflict with their own preferences. Users read the target person’s account and use our generative AI system to redesign a space to accommodate the target person. Preliminary studies demonstrate that the act of redesigning the space may lead to greater empathy for the target person, which may help advance conversations around public spaces.