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Hepburn, M. R. (2025) The potential for “vibe design” in digital media andragogy. In: 22nd London Met Learning and Teaching Conference, 24-25 June 2025, London Metropolitan University.
Generative Artificial Intelligence is being touted as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, holding the promise of democratising creativity and ultimately, creating a postwork future (Bastani, 2019). Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) will potentially have a significant impact on digital media degrees in the UK higher education sector at all levels, therefore. Digital media degrees – whether they are categorised in relation to either science or arts – tend to include some practical design elements in the creation of digital artefacts, combined with a deeper mastery of theoretical and methodological issues for the digital media field. The complexity of the digital media degree is enhanced by how wide the digital media field is – thus, individual modules on a degree cover a range of subfields, such as graphic design, animation, web & app design. The research question here reworks the authors doctoral dissertation research question to ask, “what is the potential for genAI for digital media design higher education?” (Hepburn, 2012). The potential for digital media andragogy (in terms of designing, learning, teaching and assessment) is fraught with various complex issues in relation to genAI, such as the “algorithmic experience” (Shin et al., 2020) which students are exposed to from student/genAI collaborations. Students creating digital artefacts for assessment with genAI also gives rise to critical concerns; for example, how student/ genAI assessment submissions might all “look the same” (The Citizens, 2025).
These complex issues for digital media degrees become even more overwhelming due to the plethora of genAI tools to which students now have access to. Questions remain for students on how to create digital artefacts with GenAI, as well as how to ensure a critical lens within which to innovate with new genAI forms. Inroads into answering the above research question, show how using the term “Vibe Design” from industry could help gain clarity on themes arising for digital media andragogy and genAI. Vibe design is (rather optimistically!) defined as “leveraging AI to handle the detailed execution of designing artefacts(sic) so that humans can focus on the creative and empathetic aspects” (Nielsen, 2025). Vibe Design can give a clear framework for understanding and exploring further the scenarios, challenges and opportunities for GenAI in digital media andragogy – see how the concept of vibe design has been applied in the construction industry – asserted as a democratising force (Ghosh, 2025, unpublished). Conceptual developments on vibe design show how it provides a useful lens with which to investigate the potential for genAI for digital media higher education. The research outcomes of investigating the potential “vibe design” in digital media andragogic practice are at this stage outlined through scenarios, challenges and opportunities – for example, the opportunity for students to hone prompt engineering as a skill in vibe design is as vital as it is to vibe coding (Neilsen, 2025). Future directions for this research highlight the importance of a critical practice- based approach in scaffolding students in the ethical use of genAI tools for vibe designing (Hepburn, 2025).
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