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In addition to research papers, the Design Society is developing several valuable resources for those interested in the study of design. These include a repository of PhD theses, a library of case studies and transcripts of design activities, and an archive of our newsletters. Please note that these resources are accessible exclusively to Design Society members.

Can LLM-driven synthetic participants help user research? A case study in designing augmented reality for education

Xu, Suyi (1); Roberto, Rafael (1,2); Silva, Manoela (3); Gao, Ziwei (4); Liu, Qi (1)

Type:
Papers
DS 145: Proceedings of the DESIGN2026 19th International Design Conference
Year:
2026
Editor:
Štorga, M.; Škec, S.; Martinec, T.; Marjanović, D.; Pavković, N.
Author:
Xu, Suyi (1); Roberto, Rafael (1,2); Silva, Manoela (3); Gao, Ziwei (4); Liu, Qi (1)
Series:
DESIGN
Institution:
1: University of Bath, United Kingdom; 2: SENAI Innovation Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Brazil; 3: Universidade de Pernambuco, Brazil; 4: University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Page(s):
2601-2610
DOI number:
10.1017/pds.2026.10618
ISSN:
2732-527X (Online)
Abstract:
Conventional user research with human participants faces significant challenges, including substantial time and resource requirements, and limited scalability. In response, this study presents an efficient, cost-effective workflow driven by large language models (LLMs) for simulating user research with synthetic participants (SPs) at scale. In a case study in design augmented reality for education, SPs’ open-ended answers were plausible and comprehensive, yet semi-open and closed items diverged from those of humans. SPs can augment early qualitative work, but cannot replace human studies.
Keywords:
large language model (LLM), artificial intelligence (AI), user research, synthetic participants, design research
DESIGN2026 - The 19th International Design Conference
Conferences

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