Frontend Diffusion: Empowering Self-Representation of Junior Researchers and Designers Through Agentic Workflows

Abstract: With the continuous development of generative AI's logical reasoning abilities, AI's growing code-generation potential poses challenges for both technical and creative professionals. But how can these advances be directed toward empowering junior researchers and designers who often require additional help to build and express their professional and personal identities? We present Frontend Diffusion, a multi-stage agentic system, transforms user-drawn layouts and textual prompts into refined website code, thereby supporting self-representation goals. A user study with 13 junior researchers and designers shows AI as a human capability enhancer rather than a replacement, and highlights the importance of bidirectional human-AI alignment. We then discuss future work such as leveraging AI for career development and fostering bidirectional human-AI alignment on the intent level.