Grasping AI: experiential exercises for designers
This addresses the problem for designers in balancing AI technology with human interaction, though it is incremental as it builds on existing design education methods.
The paper tackled the challenge of helping designers ideate with AI by introducing nine experiential exercises in an interaction design course, finding that these exercises made complex AI properties like privacy and autonomy more tangible and improved students' reflectiveness and responsibility in design.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are increasingly integrated into the functioning of physical and digital products, creating unprecedented opportunities for interaction and functionality. However, there is a challenge for designers to ideate within this creative landscape, balancing the possibilities of technology with human interactional concerns. We investigate techniques for exploring and reflecting on the interactional affordances, the unique relational possibilities, and the wider social implications of AI systems. We introduced into an interaction design course (n=100) nine 'AI exercises' that draw on more than human design, responsible AI, and speculative enactment to create experiential engagements around AI interaction design. We find that exercises around metaphors and enactments make questions of training and learning, privacy and consent, autonomy and agency more tangible, and thereby help students be more reflective and responsible on how to design with AI and its complex properties in both their design process and outcomes.