ENVISION YOUR BRAND EVOLVING IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD.
LET'S CREATE THIS FUTURE TOGETHER!
AI ETIQUETTE
10 PRINCIPLES OF CONSCIOUS PROMPTING
From the dopamine loops in our brains to the massive data centers straining the planet, every prompt has a hidden cost. AI systems are seductive—affirming your choices and validating your productivity until, without noticing, you've outsourced your judgment.
This isn't a system failure; it’s exactly how it was designed to work. Conscious prompting means reclaiming your digital sovereignty. Below are 10 principles for the intentional use of AI.
Do not take these rules too serious, but stay curious!
Enjoy!
#01
Do Not Prompt as Your First Move.
"Human first, AI second" is the sequence. For core problem-solving and navigating early ambiguity, you cannot outsource raw observation and human presence. Starting with a prompt locks you into a machine's logic before you have even stepped into the real world to interview your audience, speak with your client, or collaborate with a teammate.
Step away from the screen first. Define the problem frame and sketch 2–3 core concepts with your team to establish a true human baseline, protecting your project from algorithmic anchoring. Bring AI into the loop only after this foundation is built—using it strictly for speed or controlled exploration.
#02
Do Not Prompt to Outsource Your Judgment.
AI is great at rapid-fire ideas, but its polished output creates a trap: it looks finished, so your brain stops questioning its logic. This creates an immediate anchoring bias, making it hard to think outside the machine's initial suggestions.
When Diverging: Frame your problem space before you prompt. Use AI to expand options, but rely on your own vision to separate the noise from actual signal.
When Converging: Set your own success criteria before narrowing down. Use AI only to stress-test or organize your choices, never to make the final selection. Deciding which ideas are worth it and why is the core of design thinking. If you let the system curate your choices, you've outsourced your authority.
Remember: Your judgment is irreplaceable!
#03
Do Not Prompt When Ethics or Cultural Sensitivity Matter.
AI systems hallucinate, embed cultural bias, and misrepresent minority aesthetics.
Ethical responsibility cannot be delegated. Stay accountable. When representing marginalized communities,
dealing with trauma, or creating culturally embedded symbols, work human-only.
The designer remains responsible.
#04
Do Not Prompt When Authorship or Craft Matters.
Developing your unique creative identity and personal style is what turns you into a design leader.
True leadership comes from your own perspective, so you have to build your own baseline first.
Hunting for a distinct style, learn a new medium, study specific artists deeply, make a digital moodboard with your findings, make your own prompt library with your favorite references, styles, words, photographic vocabularies, mediums, textures, graphics, and what else inspires you.
Or work entirely without AI. Your hand, your time, and your raw curiosity are the entire point of the craft.
Authorship is about meaning. If you let AI generate your style for you, you become an editor of the machine's taste rather than the author of your own. Anyone could copy you in a heartbeat.
To be recognized for your unique voice, you have to do the heavy lifting of finding it yourself.
#05
Do Not Prompt When You Need Situated Knowledge.
You cannot outsource observation. Real users, materials, spatial contexts, lived constraints matter and require embodied presence. Go and do an interview, speak to your audience, listen, observe, be curious. Be present. When conducting fieldwork, UX observation, user testing, or responding to a client's specific constraints—observe and listen without AI mediation.
#06
Do Not Prompt When Confidentiality
Is Required.
Many systems pose privacy and IP risks. Data may be logged, cached, or used for model improvement.
Protect what's sensitive. When working under NDAs, designing pre-launch products, or handling protected materials—keep AI out of the loop.
Many commercial AI systems pose privacy risks, as your data can be logged or used to train future models. When working under NDAs, designing pre-launch products, or handling proprietary client materials, keep cloud-based AI out of the loop. If you must use AI, build a secure workaround: run open-source models locally on your own machine entirely offline, or use private enterprise APIs that contractually guarantee data privacy.
Once you paste sensitive data into a standard cloud prompt, you lose control of it forever. If your setup isn't running locally or securely sandboxed, keep the work entirely human-only.
#07
Do Not Prompt to Escape the
Endless Loop.
The most insidious cost is invisible: designer dependency. Each prompt confirms competence; each output invites another prompt. You cycle through variations chasing increasingly specific results from inherently stochastic systems, unaware you are participating in energy extraction and the gradual outsourcing of your judgment.
Recognize the seduction. If you find yourself prompting repeatedly to "get it right," stop. The system is working as designed—and you are the extraction.
#08
Do Not Prompt Blind to the Hidden Supply Chain.
Every prompt triggers a massive, invisible global footprint of material extraction and human labor. GenAI queries consume roughly 10 times more energy than a standard online search, alongside vast amounts of water for data center cooling.
Beneath this environmental toll lies a grueling layer of digital labor—specifically, underpaid data labelers and content moderators screening toxic material behind the scenes.
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The Reality: A prompt is never just an abstract computational act; it actively draws on fragile power grids, natural resources, and exploited labor.
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Conscious design requires looking past the smooth, instant interface. Before you hit enter, practice strategic restraint and ask yourself: Is this specific query worth its planetary and human cost?
#09
Stop Prompting When AI Begins to Drive the Direction.
You are the designer. AI is the collaborator. If the system is making the creative decisions and you are choosing between its outputs, you have reversed the relationship.
Reclaim authority. Stop. Go back to human thinking. Reassert your judgment!
#10
Do Not Prompt When You Seek the Unexpected.
GenAI works on probability—it predicts the most likely next pixel or word based on a mathematical average of what already exists. Prompting for creative breakthroughs inherently funnels your work into a statistical mean. There is nothing new happening here!
If you want truly innovative, novel, disruptive, or avant-garde design, you must look outside the latent space of existing internet data. True innovation lives in the statistically improbable.
Do not take these rules too serious, but stay curious!
Download the PDF here.
© 2026, Ulrike Kerber/Viva Design. All rights reserved. Do not distribute or reproduce without permission.
CREATIVITY IS HUMAN: MANIFESTO FOR A HUMAN–AI FUTURE. Creativity begins in human perception, emotion, and embodied experience. AI does not originate vision; it reflects, recombines, and amplifies what humans place into it. This manifesto asserts a simple position. AI is not the author of our future. We are. Yet AI can become a powerful collaborator, extending our capacity to see, explore, and imagine. AI is an echo. It returns fragments of our cultural memory, our data, our biases, and our aspirations. Because of this, working with AI requires criticality and self-awareness. We must examine what we project into the system and what comes back. This reflective loop is not a threat to creativity but a training ground for more conscious creative practice. AI is an amplifier. It expands the speed, scale, and dimensionality of our ideas. Designers, artists, and storytellers can now explore variations, test alternatives, and interrogate possibilities that would have taken days, months, or entire teams. This acceleration is not about efficiency for its own sake. It is about freeing cognitive and emotional bandwidth for deeper thinking, more ambitious concepts, and more humane outcomes. AI is a collaborator. A good collaborator challenges us, surprises us, and sometimes unsettles us. The value of working with AI lies not only in producing outputs but in the friction it introduces. That friction generates new directions, unexpected aesthetics, and conceptual openings that spark imaginative leaps. Collaboration with AI is most generative when humans stay central, curious, and discerning rather than passive or deferential. Human creativity is a force for meaning, beauty, and societal transformation. It is also fragile. It needs rituals of presence, moments of stillness, and environments that foster openness rather than overwhelm. In a world defined by rapid technological change, designers and makers must learn to build not only workflows but mindsets that cultivate groundedness. Creativity requires attention. Attention requires consciousness. And consciousness requires care. This manifesto invites designers, educators, and creators to approach AI not as a replacement for human imagination but as a partner that expands it. Let us craft the delicate, the strange, and the beautiful. Let us explore imagery and ideas that stretch beyond our habitual thinking. Let us use AI to solve problems that previously felt impossible and to design futures that are purposeful rather than accidental. To work with AI is to step into a new creative ecology—one defined by curiosity, flexibility, and ethical responsibility. We must remain vigilant about authorship, bias, energy consumption, and social impact. We must ask who benefits, who is excluded, and what cultural narratives we reinforce or challenge. Critical awareness is not a constraint; it is the foundation for responsible creative freedom. The goal is not to become “AI experts” but to become more conscious creators. When humans bring intention, compassion, and imaginative rigor, AI becomes a catalyst for expanding what design and storytelling can be. As we enter this new era, let us build tools, narratives, and futures that honor both innovation and humanity. Creativity is human. AI widens the horizon. Let’s create with clarity, courage, and care.
FLUXUS AND AIDT - THE CONCEPT
Conceptual Foundations of FLUXUS and AIDT (AIDT)
The rise of AI is reshaping how designers learn and work, and many existing educational course structures can’t keep pace with rapidly changing tools and expectations.
Design education needs environments that are flexible, hands-on, and centered on the people learning, not just the technology. This is the context in which the FLUXUS framework was created. FLUXUS offers a holistic way of structuring learning spaces and experiences that support the AI-Assisted Design Thinking (AIDT) process.
While AIDT focuses on how designers ideate, prototype, and iterate with AI and AR tools, FLUXUS defines the mindset and conditions that make this kind of learning possible.
The name reflects its intent. Flux signals movement and ongoing change, mirroring today’s design landscape, and us highlights collaboration and shared agency. Together, FLUXUS describes a learning philosophy that is adaptive, communal, and continually evolving.
Philosophical Foundations
FLUXUS draws from these interrelated theoretical traditions:
1. Experiential and Constructivist Learning.
Design education is rooted in doing, testing, and refining. Drawing on Kolb and Dewey, FLUXUS reinforces the idea that learning happens through active engagement with tools, materials, and communities. In this model, AI becomes part of the creative process rather than an external add-on, helping learners explore, iterate, and make meaning through experimentation.
2. Reflective Practice and Professional FGrowth.
Inspired by Schön’s work on reflective practice, FLUXUS integrates moments of mindful observation and shared reflection. Simple rituals—journaling, group critiques, or short grounding exercises—support focus, emotional balance, and critical thinking. These skills matter even more in fast-changing, tech-heavy environments.
3. Flow and Creative Performance.
Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow shapes how FLUXUS structures learning experiences. By creating a safe, supportive environment with clear challenges and collaborative feedback, the framework aims to help learners reach states of deep focus and collective creative momentum.
THE STRENGTH
Taken together, these traditions conceptualize learning as a process that is active, reflective, and affectively engaging.
FLUXUS extends these ideas into the contemporary context of AI-augmented design,
proposing that learning itself is always in flux = dynamic, adaptive, and co-constructed.
The term functions as an educational metaphor, not an art-historical lineage: it evokes movement and transformation
while the suffix us = emphasizes shared agency and community. In this sense, FLUXUS encapsulates the philosophical spirit of
continuous change and collective creation that underpins the framework’s design.
THE RESEARCH
Workshops and learning materials were developed in multiple studies with design and content creator students at universities in Sweden, Germany, and the USA, as well as several workshops for professional teams, all extending over the course of the last 3 years.
In addition, nine expert interviews and auto-ethnographical observations were conducted, and analyzed.
Three peer-to-peer articles were written to substantiate the framework.
ULRIKE KERBER
With more than 25 years of experience as a designer, creative director, and founder of the award-winning design studio Viva Design, she has worked with global media brands including Disney, MTV, Nickelodeon, E! Entertainment, and BET. Her work has received multiple recognitions, including an Emmy nomination and Promax awards.
She holds an MA in Communication Design and a second MA in Digital Management with a focus on AI and Creativity from Hyper Island (2023). As a PhD researcher, she examines how AI can enhance creativity, and how design education reshapes in rapidly evolving technological environments. She leads AI workshops in Design Thinking, Speculative Design, Motion Design, and experimental storytelling, and contributes to scientific research in AI and creative practice.
Her books "The Best AI Tools for Designers" and "Ancestors of the Future" are available on Amazon.
She teaches motion design at Berlin International University (BA) and design management and AI at the Media University (MA). She previously served as a professor of visual communication at SCAD, USA. Other positions include industry leader at Hyper Island, Sweden; lecturer at Berghs School of Business, University of Communication, China; and AI workshop leader at the Design Thinking Center of Kazakhstan.
WORKSHOP EXAMPLE 2023:
David Hwang, CA
I highly recommend Ulrike’s MidJourney seminar for designers, illustrators and creative directors. As an early adopter of MidJourney, and as an established creative director herself, Ulrike’s knowledge of MidJourney shows how A.I. can be useful as a tool to enhance the creative process and possibilities of A.I. assisting your workflow. I really enjoyed joining other creatives from around the world.
Meg Barbour, NY
Ulrike brings the world of AI design to your fingertips in ONE HOUR in her workshops. She is super passionate and on fire about creating and exploring cutting-edge design solutions. As a fearless leader and pioneer in co-creating AI algorithms and futuristic innovative design, she facilitates workshops where together we create and deliver a brand identity package to attract the right audience -- including a color palette, typeface, logo concept, copywriting, and a website product. A solid design concept in ONE HOUR. Unbelievable! It's so amazing that I encourage you to experience the power of AI with Ulrike. It may change the way you approach design forever.
Antonella S., Sweden
Ulrike is a modern and unafraid creative who loves to share her knowledge and her talents. She's industrious and generous and likes to push the boundaries of tech and art for the benefit of society. She's an asset to any team that wants to try new things and needs speed, agility and courage.