Composing music for video is essential yet challenging, leading to a growing interest in automating music generation for video applications. Existing approaches often struggle to achieve robust music-video correspondence and generative diversity, primarily due to inadequate feature alignment methods and insufficient datasets. In this study, we present General Video-to-Music Generation model (GVMGen), designed for generating high-related music to the video input. Our model employs hierarchical attentions to extract and align video features with music in both spatial and temporal dimensions, ensuring the preservation of pertinent features while minimizing redundancy. Remarkably, our method is versatile, capable of generating multi-style music from different video inputs, even in zero-shot scenarios. We also propose an evaluation model along with two novel objective metrics for assessing video-music alignment. Additionally, we have compiled a large-scale dataset comprising diverse types of video-music pairs. Experimental results demonstrate that GVMGen surpasses previous models in terms of music-video correspondence, music quality generative diversity, and application universality.

In conceptual design, designers often face the challenge of navigating vast design spaces to define ambiguous problems and generate feasible solutions. Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offer new opportunities to support this process. However, formative research revealed that designers struggle to simultaneously advance both problem and solution spaces when using GenAI in conceptual design, leading to increased communication load and diminished solution practicality. This study explores the integration of GenAI with the problem-solution co-evolution model to facilitate the construction of a structured design space. We propose a GenAI-supported method for expanding and evaluating the design space and developed the GPSdesign system based on this method. Compared with a baseline system, GPSdesign fosters greater design space divergence, retrospection, and structured construction, while improving design efficiency and solution quality.

Creative design is an inherently complex and iterative process characterized by continuous exploration, evaluation, and refinement. While recent advances in generative AI have demonstrated remarkable potential in supporting specific design tasks, there remains a critical gap in understanding how these technologies can enhance the holistic design process rather than just isolated stages. This paper introduces DesignManager, a novel AI-powered design support system that aims to transform how designers collaborate with AI throughout their creative workflow. Through a formative study examining designers' current practices with generative AI, we identified key challenges and opportunities in integrating AI into the creative design process. Based on these insights, we developed DesignManager as an interactive copilot system that provides node-based visualization of design evolution, enabling designers to track, modify, and branch their design processes while maintaining meaningful dialogue-based collaboration. The system offers two collaboration modes: DesignManager-guiding and Designer-guiding. Designers can engage in conversational interactions with the DesignManager to obtain design inspiration and tool recommendations, and proactively advance the design progress. The system employs an agent framework to manage decoupled contextual information emerged during the design process, facilitating deep understanding of designers' needs and providing context-aware assistance. Our technical evaluation validated the effectiveness of context decoupling and the use of agent framework, while the open-ended user study with experts demonstrated that DesignManager successfully supports intuitive intention expression, flexible process control, and deeper creative articulation. This work contributes to the understanding of how AI can evolve from task-specific tools to collaborative partners in creative design processes.

Generative AI models have been widely used for image creation. However, generating images that are well-aligned with users’ personal styles on aesthetic features (e.g., color and texture) can be challenging due to the poor style expression and interpretation between humans and models. Through a formative study, we observed that participants showed a clear subjective perception of the desired style and variations in its strength, which directly inspired us to develop style-strength-based control and evaluation. Building on this, we present StyleFactory, an interactive system that helps users achieve style alignment. Our interface enables users to rank images based on their strengths in the desired style and visualizes the strength distribution of other images in that style from the model’s perspective. In this way, users can evaluate the understanding gap between themselves and the model, and define well-aligned personal styles for image creation through targeted iterations. Our technical evaluation and user study demonstrate that StyleFactory accurately generates images in specific styles, effectively facilitates style alignment in image creation workflow, stimulates creativity, and enhances the user experience in human-AI interactions.

In soccer, player action evaluation provides a fine-grained method to analyze player performance and plays an important role in improving winning chances in future matches. However, previous studies on action evaluation only provide a score for each action, and hardly support inspecting and comparing player actions integrated with complex match context information such as team tactics and player locations. In this work, we collaborate with soccer analysts and coaches to characterize the domain problems of evaluating player performance based on action scores. We design a tailored visualization of soccer player actions that places the action choice together with the tactic it belongs to as well as the player locations in the same view. Based on the design, we introduce a visual analytics system, Action-Evaluator, to facilitate a comprehensive player action evaluation through player navigation, action investigation, and action explanation. With the system, analysts can find players to be analyzed efficiently, learn how they performed under various match situations, and obtain valuable insights to improve their action choices. The usefulness and effectiveness of this work are demonstrated by two case studies on a real-world dataset and an expert interview.