Human–AI collaboration in creative design represents one of the most profound transformations in contemporary knowledge work, reshaping how creativity is understood, practiced, and evaluated. Drawing strictly on foundational and contemporary scholarship in creativity studies, design research, and artificial intelligence, this article develops a comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of cognitive synergy between humans and AI systems in creative design contexts. The study synthesizes psychological theories of creativity, sociocultural models of creative production, and human-centered AI frameworks to investigate how agency, authorship, and responsibility are negotiated in co-creative systems. Using a qualitative, theory-driven methodology grounded in interpretive analysis of existing conceptual frameworks and documented design practices, the article explores how AI systems function not merely as tools but as cognitive partners that shape ideation, exploration, and evaluation processes. The results reveal that cognitive synergy emerges through dynamic interaction patterns characterized by distributed cognition, iterative sensemaking, and negotiated control. However, these benefits coexist with tensions surrounding attribution of creative credit, ethical responsibility, and power asymmetries embedded in algorithmic systems. The discussion situates these findings within broader debates on responsible AI, the future of creative labor, and the evolving role of designers in socio-technical ecosystems. By articulating a nuanced framework for understanding human–AI creative collaboration, the article contributes to theory, practice, and policy, offering a foundation for designing AI systems that enhance human creativity while preserving autonomy, accountability, and cultural meaning.

Postgraduate education occupies a distinctive position within the contemporary global knowledge economy, functioning simultaneously as a site of advanced intellectual training, professional identity formation, and psychosocial transformation. Despite its promise, postgraduate study is widely experienced as a period of intense stress, uncertainty, and emotional vulnerability, particularly among students who enter academic programs without prior work experience, those encountering academic and writing-related challenges, and those living with learning disabilities. Drawing strictly on six foundational and contemporary scholarly sources, this study develops an integrated, publication-ready synthesis of the psychosocial and experiential realities shaping postgraduate students’ academic lives. Using a phenomenological and interpretive analytic framework, this article brings together insights from stress research in Indian universities, experiential learning theory applied to novice postgraduates, scoping review findings on learning disabilities in higher education, and recent work on academic writing challenges among Chinese postgraduate students.

The article is anchored in the premise that postgraduate education cannot be understood purely as an intellectual process; it must be conceptualized as a complex psychosocial environment in which cognitive demands, emotional regulation, identity development, and structural inequalities intersect. Hazarika’s investigations into postgraduate stress in Assam-based universities reveal that academic overload, performance anxiety, and role ambiguity constitute persistent psychological burdens for students (Hazarika, 2019; Hazarika &Barua, 2021). Sarmah’s research further demonstrates that academic stress is not merely episodic but embedded in institutional cultures that prioritize performance metrics over student wellbeing (Sarmah, 2021).

By weaving these strands into a unified theoretical narrative, this article argues that postgraduate stress is not an individual weakness but an emergent property of academic systems that privilege implicit norms, high-stakes assessment, and narrow definitions of competence. The findings highlight how lack of work experience, learning disabilities, and academic writing challenges interact with institutional expectations to produce compounded vulnerability. At the same time, the literature also identifies resilience strategies, peer support, reflective learning, and inclusive teaching as powerful mediators of postgraduate wellbeing and success. The article concludes by calling for a holistic, equity-oriented model of postgraduate education that recognizes emotional labor, experiential diversity, and neurodiversity as central to academic excellence rather than peripheral concerns.