During the Dragon’s Day presentation, I received several insightful comments that prompted me to critically reconsider the direction and depth of my project.
The experts suggested that I explore the practice of the Institute of Digital Fashion (IoDF) — a London-based creative think tank and consultancy operating at the intersection of fashion, technology, and digital culture.
IoDF’s research focuses on Digital Identity and Post-Human Aesthetics, examining how emotional connection and human experience are being redefined in hybrid and virtual spaces (Institute of Digital Fashion, 2024).
Their practice blurs the boundaries between the physical and digital self, offering new perspectives on how presence, emotion, and authorship are reinterpreted in the algorithmic age.
This thinking strongly resonates with my ongoing research on human warmth in AI-assisted design — both explore how technology can expand creativity while simultaneously challenging the boundaries of empathy.
At the same time, this feedback made me realise that while my project focuses on emotional connection, it may have previously remained at an aesthetic level of empathy without addressing the behavioural and ethical dimensions of emotion.
This reflection pushed me to reconsider my approach: rather than asking how emotion appears in AI design, I needed to investigate how emotion is generated, experienced, and transmitted within the creative process.
This shift also revealed a clear continuity between my Intervention 3 and Intervention 4.
In Intervention 3, I invited audiences to directly use AI tools to co-create brand visuals, allowing them to personally experience the creative process and emotional tension within human–AI collaboration.
In Intervention 4, I reversed this perspective — transforming participants from creators into observers.
They were invited to watch two professional designers — one using traditional tools, the other using AI-assisted tools — complete the same design task (for example, a bag brand campaign).
This shift from participatory experience to empathic observation deepened the research’s focus on how emotion and perception operate within creative behaviour.
The experts also referenced two theoretical frameworks that reinforced my reflections:
Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny” (1919) and Masahiro Mori’s “Uncanny Valley” (1970).
Both explore the discomfort humans feel when artificial representations appear almost real yet remain subtly unfamiliar (Freud, 1919; Mori, 1970).
This observation directly aligns with my findings in Unit 3, where participants described AI-generated visuals as “too perfect” or “lacking warmth.”
Revisiting these theories made me question whether emotional distance is an unavoidable consequence of automation,
or whether it can be reshaped through design and narrative strategies that reintroduce human presence.
Another key piece of feedback from the experts closely echoed my existing direction.
They noted that my project already involved rich observational and performative dimensions, yet these were often underrepresented in my presentation.
They suggested that I use video not only as documentation but as a research medium, enabling audiences and stakeholders to see the emotional flow within human–AI collaboration.
Interestingly, my Intervention 4 had already embraced this approach before the feedback.
The entire design process was video-recorded, capturing both the designers’ creative rhythms, cognitive focus, and emotional engagement,
as well as the audience’s emotional responses, commentary, and perceptual shifts.
By structuring the research around process rather than outcome, the study became more perceptible, experiential, and empathetic.
This approach allowed me to translate creative behaviour into emotional insight — turning the act of design into a lens for understanding affect.
Through this process, I came to realise that the core of my research is not what AI produces, but how the human is seen and felt within AI-assisted creation.
AI is not a replacement for human creativity, but rather a mirror that reflects the complexity of human perception, vulnerability, and emotion.
Moving forward, I plan to continue using video documentation and dynamic presentation
to make my research process more transparent, accessible, and emotionally resonant.
I aim for audiences to move from observers to witnesses of emotion — to truly see how warmth, tension, and empathy emerge through human–AI collaboration.
This is not merely a methodological progression,
but a reaffirmation of my research philosophy —
not to passively respond to technological trends, but to actively construct a new narrative in which emotion and technology coexist.
References
- Freud, S. (1919) The Uncanny. Standard Edition, Vol. XVII. London: Hogarth Press.
- Institute of Digital Fashion (IoDF). (2024) About us. Available at: https://www.iodf.co.uk (Accessed: 2 November 2025).
- Mori, M. (1970) The Uncanny Valley. Energy, 7(4), pp. 33–35.
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