Like everywhere, our d.school instructors have been busy experimenting with the uses and implications of emerging tech. This fall, one of our longtime collaborators, Glenn Fajardo, launched a series of hands-on experiments with faculty, staff, and students around how generative AI can be a catalyst for creativity. These explorations have been collaborative, reflective, and are still unfolding. Here's what he found...
Easier Isn’t the Goal?
When people use AI in their creative process, I’ve noticed a wide range of reactions. Some are genuinely excited when they realize something in a new way. Some have a more muted response, even when the results are unexpected: “Sure, it’s cool, but I didn’t do it. The AI did it.” And then there are those who select a few options in an AI tool and feel they’ve found their artistic genius. Has something been created? Sure. But have they really created something?
I’m mostly for lowering barriers and increasing access for everyone to tap into their creativity. But I’m not a fan of how a lot of generative AI tools are being marketed as “the easy button.”
When the goal is just to generate something that looks impressive, we miss the journey where the real learning, growth, and magic happen.
As of early 2025, no one really knows how creativity will change with AI. In the mid 1980s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak thought “the home computer may be going the way of video games, which are a dying fad.” (Double oof!) And there was a time that people predicted social media would lead to greater empathy. (Yikes!) From history, we should be cautious about tech predictions.
So with humility, I’m working to understand how creativity will change with AI.
Creativity isn’t just what we do; it’s who we are.
Neuroscientists have found that the ability to notice the new and linger on the unexpected–two skills central to creativity–activates reward circuits in the brain, such as those linked to dopamine. From an evolutionary standpoint, noticing what’s different helped us adapt, find new opportunities, and survive.
But creativity isn’t only about encountering the new. It’s about choosing it. It’s about intentionally navigating uncertainty and shaping ideas. That’s creative agency.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, in their work on Self-Determination Theory, identify a sense of agency as one of the core psychological needs that fuels intrinsic motivation. It’s also a key ingredient for Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow state, a deep and enjoyable immersion where challenge meets skill and time seems to stretch and collapse all at once.
Flow doesn’t mean easy. When there’s no challenge, we check out. If we treat AI as “the easy button,” we risk stripping away the friction that makes flow possible.
When we rely on lazy prompting, AI tools default to polished but predictable outputs. These lazy same-y results may wear thin fast.
So if flow keeps us engaged in creating, and creative agency keeps us engaged with what we create, how is using AI changing the ways we engage in the creative process?
How might the locus of human choices change with AI?
Locus comes from the Latin for “place.” Not just any place, but the spot where something happens. A center of action. A point of control. How might that place shift for our creative agency as the tools around us evolve?
When the camera emerged in the mid-1800s, people feared it could lead to the eventual death of painting. But it actually expanded the realm of artistic expression. Painters were no longer confined to capturing reality with precision. The creative choices shifted toward mood, movement, and abstraction. Impressionism, expressionism, cubism, and surrealism surged forward, each exploring new possibilities for where artistic meaning could live.
The same happens with music. In the early 1970s, as Hip Hop was just beginning, sampling wasn’t seen as a “real” way to make music. But DJs like Kool Herc redefined what a musical decision could be. Layering beats, looping rhythms, stretching the past into something new.
These weren’t shortcuts. They were choices. Inventive choices. The locus of musical authorship shifted from composing notes on a staff to curating, remixing, and reimagining what music could be.
New tools don’t erase human creativity. But they do rearrange it. And it takes time for people to figure out the new human choices that are possible with a new medium. So, new mediums mimic old mediums. That continues until people figure out the “grammar” and possibilities of the new.
As of early 2025, people are trying to use AI largely to copy the old. And that’s okay. We have to start somewhere. But it’s good to get curious and experiment in ways that go beyond trying to replicate and automate things that have already been done.
It’s time to explore how our creativity might shift with AI.
What if we use AI’s presence to prompt us to get a fresh perspective on the whole creative process?
Can we use AI not just to generate things, but to deepen our own creative flow?
What if AI could help us stretch our choices, sharpen our attention, and expand the space where human creativity happens?
When working with AI, the core creative act might not be hitting generate but the intent before and the reflection after that moment.
The “before” is setting the direction. Asking the questions. Choosing what to explore. All before you even write a prompt. It’s intuition-led, not task-driven.
The “after” is listening. Editing. Curating. Remixing. Sitting with what the AI gives you, not just to accept or reject, but to notice. To find sparks. To follow what feels alive. To take a half-formed idea and turn it into something that breathes.
To explore this idea, try the Articles of Serendipity activity. It is one simple example of how we can practically reshape both our expectations of AI and our expectations for ourselves in the AI age.
In Part Two of this series, we’ll explore the skills that might quietly become more essential in the age of AI if we hope to not only preserve, but also expand our creative capacities. Some of these skills might feel surprisingly familiar, hiding in plain sight and waiting to be seen in a new light.