7.3 Design Research During and After Artificial Intelligence

Corresponding Chairs

 Matthew Lee-Smith, Loughborough University

Jesse Josua Benjamin, Eindhoven University of Technology

Co-Chairs

Mafalda Gamboa, Chalmers University of Technology

Stephan Wensveen, Eindhoven University of Technology

Abstract

Love it or hate it, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has shifted the (design) research landscape, presenting the bittersweet situation of new opportunities and notable risks.

This progress is precariously dependent on scaling, be it money, power, accuracy, infrastructure, and, of course, hype. One wonders how high the peak is and the size of what is climbing it. After all, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Yet, we cannot dismiss the potential of AI in many fields, including contributing to recent Nobel Prizes. Furthermore, as an extremely malleable and broad technology, it has been taken up by creative and experimental practitioners in design, art, computer science, and beyond.

This track invites contributions on the past, present, and future of AI on design research and vice versa. It seeks a balance of critique and affirmation through a blend of past and ongoing works and future scoping of a world with/without AI. We are particularly interested in a mix of “practical” and “theoretical” work that contributes to designerly philosophies, epistemologies, methodologies, practice, and examples. This can include questions/topics such as: 

• How have design research and AI mutually shaped one another?

• What has the pivot to AI enabled design research to do, and what has it curtailed?

• What does design research look like when we no longer speak of AI, and what can we go back to researching?

• How can design unmake AI, perhaps to stop it or at least engage what has been left behind in its unrelenting progress?

Keywords

Design Research, Artificial Intelligence, Hype Cycles, Critical Discourse, Unmaking

References

Benjamin, J. J., Biggs, H., Berger, A., Rukanskaitė, J., Heidt, M. B., Merrill, N., Pierce, J., & Lindley, J. (2023). The Entoptic Field Camera as Metaphor-Driven Research-through-Design with AI Technologies. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581175

Coelho, M., & Labrune, J.-B. (2024). Large Language Objects: The Design of Physical AI and Generative Experiences. Interactions, 31(4), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1145/3672534

Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J., & Slater, J. (2024). ChatGPT is bullshit. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

Lewis, J. E., Whaanga, H., & Yolgörmez, C. (2024). Abundant intelligences: placing AI within Indigenous knowledge frameworks. AI & SOCIETY. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02099-4

Nicenboim, I., Søndergaard, M. L. J., Lindley, J., Reddy, A., Strengers, Y., Redström, J., & Giaccardi, E. (2024). Unmaking-with AI: Tactics for Decentering through Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 31(6), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3685275

Lupetti, M. L., & Murray-Rust, D. (2024). (Un)making AI Magic: A Design Taxonomy. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641954