Designing AI Tools to Support Art Learning

The ability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to provide personalized feedback to creators, co-create media with artists, and enable artists to reflect on their creative style, makes them effective facilitators of art learning. Principles of constructionism highlight the importance of open-ended creative environments for enabling creative expression in young learners, yet there exist few accessible creative playgrounds that are safe for young learners to create with AI. Guided by design principles of constructionism, creativity support and accessibility, we designed four web-based AI-enabled creative tools that support art learning for middle and high school art learners and educators. These tools were administered to 94 middle and high school students and ten educators as part of an Art and AI learning summer program. We outline the design principles guiding the development of these tools, their system design features and learnings from deploying these tools with middle and high school learners. These designing insights serve as guiding principles for Creative AI tool designers and K-12 art educators.