More-Than-Human Design and AI

Abstract

This one-day workshop brings together HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to explore how to study and design (with) AI agents from a morethan-human design perspective. We invite participants to experiment with thing ethnography and material speculations, as a starting point to map and possibly integrate emergent frameworks and methodologies for more-than-human design. By using conversational agents as a case, participants will discuss what a morethan-human approach can offer to the understanding and design of AI systems, and how this aligns with third-wave HCI concerns of networks, infrastructures, and ecologies.

Prototyping with Monkeys: Uncovering What Buttons for Monkeys Look Like

“…The challenges faced in designing for ACI are not unique and have similarities with those in other more-than-human design pursuits ( [6,39,42]). Shifting to the perspective and assessing the experience and ecology of the non-human user remain pertinent core challenges to overcome ( [39,42]).…”

“…The challenges faced in designing for ACI are not unique and have similarities with those in other more-than-human design pursuits ( [6,39,42]). Shifting to the perspective and assessing the experience and ecology of the non-human user remain pertinent core challenges to overcome ( [39,42]). Improving the ability to engage with multiple perspective and, as a result, grasping how human designs afect non-human entities can advance our adaptation to and design of the environments in which people, animals and organisms alike meet [56].…”

“…To the beneft of HCI, designing interfaces for other species can also expand our human methods to make them more inclusive and creative as a result of our better understanding of how to design for non-verbal users and users with minds and bodies very diferent from our own. Practicing this shift in perspective and attempting to assess the monkeys' experience shares similar challenges with previous morethan-human design pursuits [6,39,42]. We build on this foundation by questioning the design steps taken in prototyping to highlight commonly made assumptions, uniting islands of knowledge and strengthening ACI and HCI alike.…”

Future notification: Living and breathing in post-pandemic climate change

“…They could be operated manually, could be automated or could be third-party controlled. To explore possible tensions between the wider electricity grid and future household air technologies, we drew on a ‘thing ethnography’ approach (Giaccardi et al, 2016) to develop a ‘thing interview’ (Nicenboim et al, 2020; Reddy et al, 2021) method where participants role-played from the perspective of the technology they had just designed, pretending to be their ideal ‘air technology’ while researchers role-played the perspective of the electricity grid. The role-play was designed to help participants shift out of their present lives by ‘being’ the technology looking out onto their household members in the future in negotiation with sometimes conflicting priorities of the wider energy systems in their area.…”

Grasping AI: experiential exercises for designers

“…In line with open ended, critical and speculative prototyping methods (Malsattar et al 2019;van der Burg et al 2022;Nicenboim et al 2020) the exercises took the students into the relational and interactional possibilities of AI.…”