Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life

Gold
Tuesday, June 4, 2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Share the love for this talk
Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life
Speakers: Dan Hill
Link:

Summary

Asking after the dynamics of artificial intelligence's extraordinary recent rise recalls Hemingway's famous line about going bankrupt: "In two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." That combination underscores the emergence of many technologies, of course. It creeps up on us, and then is suddenly moving at speed, everywhere. This makes it hard for cities and places to work with the grain of tech, in order to produce equitable or sustainable outcomes. Although we rarely do it, tech asks us to step back and ask the deeper questions lurking behind all the noise. In this talk I'll describe how everyday technologies, digital and physical combined, define how we live together; how they tend to articulate what we stand for as a society, or how our cities work — and what's on the table now. Drawing together inspiring projects and cases ranging from Norway to Japan, and from new cities to reimagined regions, I'll suggest how we might align design practices in order to address our contemporary shared challenges, like climate breakdown, social cohesion, and sweeping demographic changes. As AI moves beyond shuffling playlists or improving grammar and starts coordinating mobility, energy, and water systems, or how housing is allocated or buildings are made, we must rapidly figure out how design, governance, and community best understand and take advantage of these new distributed, decentralised and collaborative technologies. In doing so, we might well challenge our preconceptions of technology, economy, and community themselves.

Key Insights

  • Technology like cars has irreversibly shaped urban sprawl and city form, often with negative health and environmental outcomes.

  • AI’s progress is gradual then sudden, necessitating proactive systemic design before widespread adoption.

  • Design must consider multiple interconnected scales: individual, service, city, region, and global.

  • Effective AI design requires balancing technical optimization with broader social, cultural, and environmental contexts.

  • Soft eyes—the ability to zoom between detailed instances and larger systems—is a crucial skill for designers integrating AI.

  • Current AI and digital platforms, like ride sharing, often worsen urban problems by incentivizing more cars, despite individual convenience.

  • Systemic containment and participatory governance are vital to handle AI’s influence on critical infrastructures like mobility and energy.

  • Design can amplify social fabric, as demonstrated by Oslo’s bike sharing scheme involving prisoner rehabilitation, linking social justice with infrastructure.

  • Resource constraints for green technologies, like electrification and batteries, highlight the need for AI to optimize sustainable material use.

  • Cultural imagination techniques, including speculative design and fiction, help anticipate AI’s broader societal impacts beyond technical solutions.

Notable Quotes

"Technology affects cities directly and profoundly, shaping how we live, work, and play."

"The car is probably one of the most negative technologies we’ve introduced at scale."

"When asked how he went bankrupt, he said in two ways: gradually and then suddenly — that’s how technology evolves."

"Design is not really about problem solving; it’s about cultural imagination."

"Can we build AI systems that foreground social fabric and enable civil conversations around shared resources?"

"Soft eyes means zooming between the instance and the system, between the tree and the forest."

"We need distributed, shared, and participatory technologies for common good outcomes."

"If we don’t design AI thoughtfully now, it will be too late when it suddenly hits us."

"Designing a chair means considering its next larger context: the room, the house, the environment."

"Culture, fiction, and art allow us to rehearse and imagine dangerous or extreme futures safely before they happen."

Ask the Rosenbot
Yalenka Mariën
Designing for Digital Inclusion in the Belgian Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Coffee with Lou #4: Taking a Peek Under the Rosenbot's Hood
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Theresa Marwah
How Atlassian is Operationalizing Respect in Research
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Victor M. Gonzalez
Practicing Learners and Learning Practitioners
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Patrick Boehler
The service shift: transforming media organizations to create real value through design
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Verónica Urzúa
The B-side of the Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Meaghan Waters
Lack of Product Thinking will Doom Your Legacy Modernization
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Welcome / Housekeeping
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Scott Jensen
Short Take #2: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Megan Blocker
What UX research maturity looks like and how we get there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Cennydd Bowles
Responsible Design in Reality
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Fatimah Richmond
The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Jilanna Wilson
Distributed DesignOps Management
2019 • DesignOps Community
Megan Kierstead
You Are a Badass at UX: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Taylor Jennings

"If we wanted to scale and continue to grow, we were going to need something to help us."

Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex Knoll

Repository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research

March 9, 2022

Nicole Aleong

"Potential refers to not yet actualized possibilities that may or may not come to fruition."

Nicole Aleong

Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology

March 26, 2024

Jeff Gothelf

"Innovation is not a spice that you sprinkle on and suddenly magical new things come out."

Jeff Gothelf

Innovation Studios: the Engines of Enterprise Experimentation

May 14, 2015

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"If you don't have dedicated accessibility people, start grassroots by building empathy and rallying teams around user stories."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility

May 26, 2022

Tess Dixon

"Having questions about team happiness broken into person, team and product helps clear up confusion in large organizations."

Tess Dixon

C'mon Get Happy

September 29, 2021

Liam Thurston

"All your team wants to do is win at career Bingo or career Snakes and Ladders, hopefully more ladders."

Liam Thurston

Why Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It

June 10, 2022

Ian Swinson

"Leadership doesn’t only mean managing; it can be mentoring, product leadership, or technical influence."

Ian Swinson

Designing and Driving UX Careers

June 8, 2016

Leisa Reichelt

"One researcher per team for at least three days a week was considered an outrageous luxury at GDS in 2013."

Leisa Reichelt

Opening Keynote: Operating in Context

November 7, 2018

Rachael Greene

"A product designer said I can now see glaring inconsistencies before I got my head around design system patterns."

Rachael Greene Alison Davis

Building a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)

October 2, 2025