Chatbots for Design

About

Chatbots for Design investigates how conversational AI can support public participation in architecture, urban design, and planning. The project develops and evaluates prototype systems that help design teams gather richer input, sustain dialogue with larger publics, and translate community knowledge into structured design evidence.

The core challenge is scale. Public meetings, workshops, and surveys exclude people based on time, language, confidence, domain expertise, or physical access. Conversational systems offer a different participation channel: one that is available asynchronously, can adapt to different users, and can elicit more considered responses than conventional instruments.

Our research is empirical: we test where chatbots perform well compared to established participation methods, where they fail, and how they should be integrated with human facilitation. We are especially interested in hybrid models, in which AI tools expand reach while in-person workshops continue to support trust, deliberation, and collective decision-making.

Current work focuses on visual chatbots that communicate through text, diagrams, and spatial representations. These systems allow participants and designers to discuss proposals with reference to concrete spatial information, rather than abstract descriptions. The goal is not to replace public dialogue but to improve the interfaces between communities, design teams, and the complex information involved in planning decisions.