SEED AI as a learning companion: embedding regenerative thinking in early-stage design pedagogy

Design education reflects the accelerated tempo of professional creative practice, where speed, deliverables and output-oriented workflows can diminish the time and attention required for critical inquiry and engagement with contextual complexity. This paper addresses these concerns through a pedagogical framing of AI for regenerative design education and practice. It presents SEED (Social and Ecological Engagement in Design), a framework-in-development that supports students and designers in foregrounding relationships among people, place and planet before design outcomes are formulated. Through the framework, SEED AI functions as a learning companion that makes reflective and contextual design reasoning visible through a conversational interface and educational scaffold. Rather than generating design outcomes, it encourages learners to articulate context and stakeholders, identify problem frames, expand ideation and creative possibility, and cultivate reflective action for planetary health. The paper situates SEED within regenerative and systems-oriented design pedagogy, explains how SEED AI translates the framework into a structured learning interaction, and presents early insights from implementation across secondary and tertiary educational settings.