Mornings are actually a great time to get some inspiration. That’s why I love the idea of Creative Mornings and I totally signed up for the IXDS Pre-Work Talks. Last Thursday the topic was “Human-Robot Relations” and since I love everything HCI-related but did not have the chance to work on a machine-learning or AI project before, I was curious to hear some first-hand experiences on the subject.

Ivan Jimenez presenting his work AI in construction (Photo by Jan Korsanke)

The first talk was by Ivan Jimenez who is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction. In his research, he is looking into how artificial intelligence can be used in architecture in order to improve construction processes. In the second talk Jan Korsanke, Senior UX Designer at ExB Research and Development, dove deeper into the topic of human-robot-relations and what factors are important in designing these interactions. He highlighted some psychological preconditions, for example, humans do trust other humans that they do not know at all, such as the pilot flying an aircraft, but struggle to trust a self-driving car, because we do not have a reference system that explains certain decisions to us and creates empathy. Also, machine learning is only as good as the data it is being trained on. When most content and data is created by white, privileged males then the resulting algorithms will be flawed, as has been shown recently.

Here are the slides of a similar presentation that Jan gave at this year’s IA conference.

Want to read further?

Here I compiled some additional information that I found helpful to learn more about designing UX for AI:

• Patrick Hebron: Machine Learning for Designers (O’Reilly Book)
• Caroline Sinders: Why UX Design for Machine Learning Matters 
• Ewa Piotrowska: Q&A with Igor Mikhalev: Rethinking Business and UX with AI
• Sagi Shrieber: AI in UX: What if we think of AI while crafting experiences
• RecastAI: UX and AI: The new best friends

Plus, you should definitely check out this very comprehensive compilation of resources by David Young for the course Designing A.I.

Finally, I very much agree with what Jan said here in this tweet – AI, technology, and the future is not something that is happening to us – we are able to design this impact. Let’s make it a good one then.

Thanks to Ivan and Jan for presenting, and to IXDS for hosting this great event series!