Conference Agenda

Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly entering engineering and design education, yet its integration into structured creative processes remains insufficiently understood. This paper presents an instrumented, sprint-based workshop that teaches engineering students to integrate creativity and GenAI into design practice while making their tool use observable across the process.

The workshop was implemented with three cohorts: first- and second-year Video Game Engineering students and first-year Master's students in Mechanical Engineering (Marche Polytechnic University). After a brief introduction to GenAI and creative processes, participants addressed comparable design briefs through seven sprints organised into four phases: Preparation, Insight, Evaluation and Elaboration. Students freely chose their preferred GenAI tools; processes were documented via Miro boards, AI conversation logs, final artefacts, and post-workshop questionnaires.

The paper describes the workshop framework and presents a preliminary qualitative analysis of 30 documented design processes, using Miro boards for case summaries and questionnaires and conversation logs as contextual evidence. Cross-case comparison showed GenAI use was strongly phase-dependent: almost universal during Elaboration, mainly as a visualisation tool, but uncommon during Evaluation. Process Governance was Human-led in 16 cases, Mixed in 8, and AI-driven in 6. The workshop offers a transdisciplinary framework for teaching and observing human--AI co-creative design processes.