(un)making Ai magic
A taxonomy that maps the design space of AI & magic, illuminating what strategies can enhance the enchanting power of AI, and what can diminish it instead. A work developed in collaboration with Dave Murray-Rust.
magical aura
AI products are inherently enchanting as they hold a magical aura that is fed by AI uncertainty and errors. We name this: magical aura, inspired by the writing by Gell on the enchantment of technology.
design for disenchantment
A distinctively designerly perspective comes from the field of Critical and Speculative design in which provocative designs are used to bring awareness to the myths and beliefs we bestow on AI things and technology more broadly as well as to manifest often obscure mechanisms of technology. With complex technological infrastructures, a range of design practices needs to be brought together to articulate the multiple mechanisms at play.
design for enchantment
Designing for enchantment allows seamless and engaging interactions with artificial agents and encourages consideration of aspects of interaction that often remain underdeveloped in HCI, such as cultural aspects of interaction. The use of enchantment and ‘make-believe’ in technology design, however, is a double-edged sword. Many examples show how computational products easily turn from friendly enchanted things to spooky presences that surround us.
read more about this
Maria Luce Lupetti and Dave Murray-Rust. 2024. (Un)making AI Magic: A Design Taxonomy. In Proceedings of the 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