Design and Artificial Intelligence: Ethical, Plural, and Situated Perspectives

Posted on 2025-11-25

Guest Editors

  • Andrés Téllez, North Carolina State University, USA
  • Valeria López Torres, North Carolina State University, USA
  • Marco Vinicio Ferruzca, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico

 

Artificial intelligence (AI), and particularly generative AI, has become one of the most influential technologies of the 21st century, permeating and impacting virtually every domain of human experience (Miao et al., 2024). In recent years, these technologies have profoundly reshaped creative, educational, and research practices in design, raising new and complex ethical, epistemological, and methodological challenges for researchers, educators, and professionals in these fields (Yu et al., 2025; Romero-Guzmán & Ortega-Terrón, 2024).

However, these transformations are not occurring homogeneously or equitably. Although these technologies are being developed and deployed globally, the agendas and reference frameworks that define AI largely originate from institutions and networks that have historically privileged Western, Eurocentric, and Anglophone perspectives, while other viewpoints, regions, languages, and cultural traditions have had less visibility and influence in shaping its definition and application (Portilla Tirado et al., 2024). This asymmetry presents a critical opportunity: to open the debate to diverse and situated perspectives that can reimagine the relationship between AI and design beyond traditionally dominant frameworks (Ofosu-Asare, 2024).

The recent academic literature on AI and design—despite its significant growth—has tended to privilege certain dominant approaches. These include techno-optimistic perspectives assuming technology can solve major human challenges while downplaying risks (e.g., Cho & Nam, 2023; Jin et al., 2024); technoproductivist or innovation-driven views that frame AI primarily as a driver of competitiveness and market value (e.g., Verganti et al., 2020; Jung et al., 2023; Wu & Li, 2024); collaborative approaches that treat AI as a creative agent or co-designer that augments human capabilities (Stoimenova & Price, 2023; Reddy, 2022; Anderson et al., 2021; Chiou et al., 2023; Kwon et al., 2024); pedagogical perspectives exploring the integration of AI into design education (e.g., Melker et al., 2025; Tellez, 2025; Hwang & Wu, 2025); and critical approaches examining the impacts of AI’s development and implementation on multiple levels (e.g., Hernández Ramírez & Ferreira, 2024; Siddharth & Luo, 2025; Zhang, 2023).

While these approaches address the interaction between design and AI, many perspectives remain underexplored or insufficiently visible. These include critical, participatory, ethical, or decolonial approaches, as well as those emerging from culturally, socially, and materially diverse contexts—often located outside traditional technological centers.

These contexts face specific challenges related to AI development and implementation that are frequently overlooked in dominant discourse, including unequal access to technological resources, the cultural and linguistic underrepresentation of many peoples and communities, dependency on external infrastructures, and ethical or social risks that arise when AI systems do not incorporate local or situated conditions.

However, these contexts are not solely spaces of scarcity or dependency. They are also laboratories of innovation, creativity, and resistance, where designers, educators, activists, and communities develop co-creation practices, sovereign data infrastructures, applications of AI for the common good, and speculative approaches for plural futures (Patil et al., 2024). Notable examples include: initiatives in Brazil to protect and support endangered Indigenous languages (Pinhaez et al., 2024); African startups applying AI to community health (Alaran et al., 2025); Latin American projects building language models for Indigenous languages (Lucas et al., 2025); and feminist and Indigenous movements reframing AI through their own practices and knowledge systems (Arora, 2024).

 

Base Diseño e Innovación, rooted in the Spanish-speaking world yet globally connected, seeks to highlight research conducted by scholars from the so-called Global South and promote dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaboration across regions. Its mission is to disseminate the role of design as a catalyst for innovation processes that improve quality of life and generate social, economic, and cultural value—while identifying emerging areas of development for the field. Read more about the journal.

For this special issue, we invite researchers, educators, professionals, and collectives to submit original manuscripts that explore, question, and propose new ways of thinking and creating at the intersection of AI and design. We seek contributions grounded in ethical commitment, theoretical rigor, methodological robustness, and deep sensitivity to local and global contexts. We welcome a broad diversity of perspectives—including feminist, queer, decolonial, ecological, critical, intercultural, and other emerging viewpoints—as well as contributions that enrich the ethical, social, and creative dimensions of this relationship. We suggest addressing some of the following themes:

 

  1. Design and Responsible Artificial Intelligence. Theoretical, methodological, and project-based foundations for responsible design in the context of AI. Includes research on ethical design, responsibility frameworks, intellectual property dilemmas, explainability (XAI), transparency strategies, accountability, and algorithmic governance (Katzenbach & Ulbricht, 2019).
  2. Education, Pedagogy, and Algorithmic Literacy. How design schools incorporate AI into their educational processes. We welcome studies exploring the impact of AI on critical thinking, creativity, ethical competencies, and data-informed design methods, as well as pedagogical approaches grounded in local or interdisciplinary contexts.
  3. Situated Practices, Cultural Diversity, and Algorithmic Justice. Design practices with AI that respond to specific social, cultural, and material realities. Includes co-design, community participation, and algorithmic justice (Buolamwini, 2023), as well as studies examining AI in relation to cultural, linguistic, aesthetic, and epistemological diversity.
  4. Data Sovereignty, Infrastructures, and Technological Autonomy. Studies questioning current technological dependencies and proposing alternatives for equitable digital autonomy. Includes research on data sovereignty, open or community infrastructures, participatory governance, and ethical technological development through design.
  5. Beyond Generative Artificial Intelligence. Recognizing that AI encompasses much more than generative models, we invite submissions on explanatory, predictive, adaptive, or interactive AI applications (Cheng et al., 2019; Ehsan et al., 2024; Liao et al., 2020; Wolf, 2019).
  6. Other Approaches to the Intersection of Design and AI. Interdisciplinary studies, critical reviews, methodological innovations, and experimental projects that broaden global dialogue on design and AI.

 

Types of Contributions

We accept submissions with rigorous argumentation, evidence, and bibliographic support that critically engage with the topics of this call.

 

  • Empirical Articles. Qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, or practice-based research (research for, through, or about design). Must clearly present the research problem, theoretical framework, methodology, procedures, data analysis, findings, and contributions to the design field.
  • Systematic Reviews, Scoping Reviews, or State-of-the-Art Studies. Rigorous literature syntheses including theoretical comparisons, historical trends, research gaps, emerging debates, or critical discussions about how AI and design have been studied across contexts.
  • Case Studies and Applied Projects. Analytical documentation of AI-related design experiences in specific contexts (communities, institutions, public or private organizations). Should include critical analysis of outcomes, limitations, ethical implications, and transferable insights.
  • Theoretical Articles and Critical Essays. Conceptual development or problematization of frameworks that enhance understanding of AI–design relations, including epistemological debates, ethical tensions, and political implications.
  • Pedagogical or Institutional Experiences. Documented analyses of educational practices, curricular transformations, or initiatives integrating design and AI. Must include evidence-based critical reflection on challenges, lessons, tensions, and conceptual foundations.

 

Submission Requirements

  • Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s OJS platform. See “Information for Authors” and “Submissions”.
  • Articles must be original and not under review elsewhere. Revised conference papers are accepted if disclosed in the abstract or introduction.
  • Manuscripts must include theoretical and empirical background, state of the art, problem, hypothesis or research question, objectives, methodology, data collection and analysis, results, and discussion.
  • Submissions may be in Spanish or English.
  • British or American English is acceptable, with consistent usage.
  • Maximum length: 5000 words.
  • References must follow APA 7th edition, including URLs and DOIs where possible.
  • See full submission guidelines here.

 

Important Dates

  • Call Launch: 24 November 2025
  • Submission Deadline (5000 words incl. references): 23 February 2026
  • Editorial and Peer Review Period: 23 February – 30 March 2026
  • Revised Manuscripts Due: 30 April 2026
  • Publication: June 2026

 

References

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