In the pursuit of more-than-human approaches to designing it is a challenge to understand the plurality of more-than-human worlds, especially the multiplicity of the more-than-human lives or biographies of things designed. In this pictorial, we experiment with speculative mapping as a process to explore pluralities of a thing we designed, called wi-fi-no-wi-fi. Using the wi-fi-no-wi-fi as a case study, we speculated through workshops, empirical investigations, and speculation to create speculative maps of different biographies. This pictorial offers three speculative maps and revealed design insights into materials as time, forming of assemblages and spaces, and multispecies perspectives of regeneration.

While legacy sketchnotes capture rich design rationales and inspirations, they are rarely reused in contemporary practice. We present Co-Ideation Across Time (CIAT), utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) to transform decades-old design sketchnotes into interactive "AI-augmented Knowledge Objects". Our system digitizes over 2,000 pages of alumni sketchnotes and connects them with conversational agents trained on corresponding theses and publications, enabling current and future students to engage in multimodal dialogue with past ideas and researchers. An exploratory evaluation with 12 participants showed that interacting with the system stimulated deeper understanding of abstract concepts, idea diversity, and fostered a stronger sense of continuity with the community’s legacy. Our contributions are threefold: (1) a method for integrating design legacies with LLM-driven conversational agents; (2) an empirical study demonstrating how this approach supports learning and intergenerational knowledge sharing; and (3) a conceptual framing of AI-Augmented Knowledge Objects as active participants in design ideation.

CHI ’25, Yokohama, Japan

UIST ’25, Busan, Republic of Korea