Enterprise AI Analysis

Agency as an Emergent Property in Human-AI Collaboration: A Case Study of AI-Enhanced Whiteboarding Tool (tldraw)

As generative AI features become increasingly integrated into creative tools, professionals navigate complex tensions between immediate control, meaningful engagement, and emergent capabilities. This late-breaking work investigates how agency emerges through dynamic interactions in AI-enhanced whiteboarding environments, moving beyond static conceptualizations toward an understanding of agency as a contextual, emergent property. Through a planned case study of tldraw's "Make Real" functionality, this work will examine how creative professionals redistribute cognitive engagement when collaborating with AI across different abstraction levels. The research examines three key dimensions of human-AI agency dynamics: (1) the negotiation of agency trade-offs, (2) emergent behavioral patterns, and (3) multifaceted professional outcomes beyond satisfaction. The proposed mixed-methods approach combines qualitative exploration of designers' lived experiences with quantitative investigation of how these agency dimensions affect professional identity and creative fulfillment. This work contributes to both theoretical understanding of emergent agency in human-AI collaboration and practical guidelines for designing whiteboarding tools that support creative agency in increasingly AI-assisted creative environments.