Schemex: Discovering Design Patterns from Examples through Iterative Abstraction and Refinement

Expertise is often built by learning from examples. This process, known as schema induction, helps us identify patterns from examples. Despite its importance, schema induction remains a challenging cognitive task. Recent advances in generative AI reasoning capabilities offer new opportunities to support schema induction through human-AI collaboration. We present Schemex, an AI-powered workflow that enhances human schema induction through three stages: clustering, abstraction, and refinement via contrasting examples. We conducted an initial evaluation of Schemex through two real-world case studies: writing abstracts for HCI papers and creating news TikToks. Qualitative analysis demonstrates the high accuracy and usefulness of the generated schemas. We also discuss future work on developing more flexible methods for workflow construction to help humans focus on high-level thinking.