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Meta-design promotes the creation of socio-technical environments that can evolve in the hands of the users. From a technical perspective, meta-design has traditionally involved variable participation and learning effort from end users, fostering different types of End-User Development (EUD) activities related to software programming.

The recent role that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are playing in system design and development, mainly with co-piloting and vibe coding, promises to transform EUD into a more spontaneous, creative, and inclusive activity with a wide range of applications. However, several issues affect AI-assisted development, such as sustainability, unpredictability, overreliance, and scalability (just to name a few). Potential harms and damages caused by AI-based technologies must be minimized. At the same time, as the possibility of errors or hallucinations may exist, there must be interaction paradigms to inform humans about the processes that generated outputs (e.g., explanations) providing an overall vision of the context that allows them to make informed decisions.

Symbiotic AI (SAI), an emerging perspective and specialization of Distributed Cognition, explores the synergistic possibilities of “AI and Humans” by empowering humans to take advantage of capabilities that modern AI (LLM) systems can contribute and at the same time, humans engaged in EUD and Meta-Design will improve the computational components.

 This 10th edition of the CoPDA workshop series aligns with the 2026 AVI’s main theme “Interactive Creativity: Agencies, Interfaces, and Ethics” by investigating how EUD, Meta-Design, and Cultures of Participation could and should evolve in the AI era. With a focus on socio-technical system design the workshop will identify unique promises and pitfalls of the AI for rethinking and reinventing learning, working, and collaborating in the AI age. The 4Cs (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication) will be discussed and critically evaluated as 21st century skills required to cope with the wicked problems and the design trade-offs that our world faces.

As a primary outcome, we expect a reflection on meta-design and EUD in light of recent technological advancements, which may help define a research agenda that can assist designers in addressing the technical and ethical risks associated with AI-assisted development.

Initial frameworks to be further developed by the workshop should promote and support stakeholders to maintain agency and transparency while shaping generative systems that align with their cognitive and ethical goals. By addressing the cognitive and ethical dimensions of AI-assisted development (including configurable transparency, human-in-the-loop validation, and meta-design scaffolding) designs will be explored that can mitigate the potential pitfalls of information overload, overreliance and deskilling.

The workshop hopes to attract submissions from researchers and practitioners from various backgrounds and communities, such as designers and users of socio-technical environments, AI researchers, learning scientists, and educators to explore the following fundamental issues:

• Focus on Wicked Problems (without no right of wrong solutions) and Design Trade-Offs
• Ecosystems for the Integration of Learning, Working, and Collaboration
• 21st century skills (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication)
• Symbiotic AI
• AI-Augmented End-User Development and Meta-Design
• Generative AI for Cognitive Empowerment and Lifelong Learning
• Configurable Transparency and Human-in-the-Loop AI Systems
• Adaptive, Adaptable and Context-Aware Interfaces
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Interactive Creativity in Education
• Vibe Coding
• Responsible Design