Can AIGC Facilitate Design Education? A Study of Aesthetic Judgment on Data Visualization Design regarding Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritages

Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) image tools have been applied in diverse design fields and proved to be able to facilitate the design process and improve design efficiency. However, few previous studies have focused on applying AIGC image tools in the design education of data visualization design, specifically regarding the topic of Chinese intangible cultural heritages (ICHs). Contributing to filling this research gap, this study examined whether AI-generated data visualization design posters regarding the topic of Chinese ICHs are no worse than Human-generated ones in aesthetic judgment (beauty and novelty) from three design dimensions: layout design, design elements, and color design. An AIGC image tool, Stable Diffusion, was used to generate posters to be compared with a student’s poster from a design workshop regarding data visualization design of Chinese ICH topics. Design-majored students (N=84) were invited to take an online survey concerning the research topic. Results from paired-samples t tests indicated that, regarding beauty evaluations, AI-generated posters were partially proved to be as good as the human-generated one in three design dimensions. Regarding novelty evaluations, all three AI-generated posters were proved to be as good as the human-generated one in all three design dimensions. The results suggest that AIGC image tools have the potential to facilitate the data visualization design process regarding Chinese ICHs to generate high-quality references for design education, enhance design efficiency, and help preserve and promote Chinese ICHs.