Assistant Professor of Architecture Narjes Abbasabadi has been awarded one of 36 seed grants from AI@UW. Narjes’ project entitled “SEED-AI 2026: DesignAI – An AI-Augmented Framework for Design Learning” was selected for funding alongside a range of other projects. The project summary is included below. More information is available here.
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers powerful new ways to support design reasoning, exploration, and data-informed decision-making, yet these capabilities remain largely untapped in architectural education. This project addresses a critical dual-literacy gap, as current curricula lack both technical fluency across AI methods and critical literacy in ethics, agency and societal impact. DesignAI develops and implements an AI-augmented educational and research framework that repositions AI beyond automation as a scaffold for design reasoning within design workflows, advancing problem framing, iterative exploration and decision-making. The framework integrates a shared foundation in AI-driven design reasoning with project-based pathways, enabling students to develop depth in selected methods (e.g., machine learning, including deep, physics-informed, and multimodal approaches, as well as generative and agentic AI systems) aligned with their research questions. Implemented in seminars and research studios focused on computational and performance-driven design, the project evaluates impacts using measurable indicators of design reasoning quality, decision-making under uncertainty and ethical and critical awareness, generating generalizable insights into AI-mediated design cognition and human–AI interaction, and producing adaptable curricular models for broader adoption.