Across contemporary challenges such as design for sustainability or artificial intelligence and networked computation at a global scale, there is a growing concern within the design that the human-centeredness that characterizes much of its foundations is reaching its limits. Ranging from the explicit focus on the human ‘user’ in the methodologies and frameworks of user-centered design to the ideas of human exceptionalism in the Western humanist tradition from which design originates, contemporary design practice has developed in relation to perspectives and contexts inherently centred on certain human needs and desires at the expense of all other forms of life – many humans included.
The more-than-human turn in design acknowledges that we are more than just ‘users’ – the ones who use things (up) – but that we are part of extensive ecosystems. Within these ecosystems, it is not exclusively humans that act and produce effects; microorganisms, plants, animals, and not the least also machines do so too. But how to conceive of these entanglements, and how can design be transformed to meet the needs of an entangled world?
In this talk, I will introduce some of the research we are doing at Umeå Institute of Design in the context of AI, such as our research project on Things That Change and the Horizon 2020 MSC ITN DCODE.
Moderator of the session: Ele Carpenter, Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Culture, Director of UmArts, Umeå University and Focus Area Coordinator, AI and Art, TAIGA.
Please register here, and we will send you a link in good time before the event, open to everyone who is interested in AI!
