Rethink literature review of design research in an age of AI – from ‘secretary work’ to scholarly synthesis of insight, frameworks, and foresight

Literature reviews in design research are meant to consolidate knowledge, clarify methodological patterns, and guide future inquiry through synthesis rather than compilation. Yet many published reviews remain largely descriptive – dominated by inventories, procedural narration, and bibliometric counting – and consequently fail to provide a coherent technical framework or actionable insight. AI–generated text further exacerbates this issue by automating surface–level summarisation while introducing risks of fabricated or erroneous citations when outputs are not rigorously verified. This perspective argues that review scholarship must shift from AI–like ‘secretary work’ to genuine knowledge construction, emphasising framework–first synthesis, defensible cross–study comparison, explicit validity regimes and failure modes, benchmark–aligned evaluation, and auditable provenance practices. Building on systematic reporting principles (e.g., PRISMA) while treating reporting as a floor rather than the endpoint, the article outlines a synthesis–driven, auditable review pipeline and calls for coordinated action among authors, reviewers, editors, and the broader community to elevate standards, strengthen integrity, and restore literature reviews as central, high–impact contributions to design research.