Design Principles for a New AI World

I was on a panel tonight discussing Ethics in Design Research. I’m on a lot of panels about design and ethics because I’ve worked in AI design most of my career.

Right before the panel, I read an article by a friend George Aye, who runs an amazing design firm called Design for Social Good, in my hometown of Chicago.

Aye’s article redefined the definiton of “good design.” It’s a great article that took Dieter Rams’ principles of good design and rewrote them.

Rams, a white, Western-educated, German industrial designer wrote these rules about 50 years ago and they’ve become so ingrained in the design lexicon that the Interaction Design Foundation calls them “10 Commandments of Good Design.”

That’s a bit epic isn’t it? Biblical allusions aside, I, like George, thought they could use a bit of a redesign. For one reason — design going into an AI era, ain’t what it needs to be.

Our current slave/master framework surrounding interaction design that puts an individual and a device at its center, creates a world where design is unilateral, individualistic, expendable and unethical. It’s time that we worry less about design as a noun — aesthicss, convenience and ease and more about design as a verb — purposeful, meaninful and active.

Aye does a great reworking of Rams’ principles writing that:

Good design honors reality

Good design creates ownership

Good design builds power

And as I contemplate how to weave ethical AI design into product development I decided to try my own reworking of design guidelines that showcase this paradigm shift from design being a passive parter in product development to design accelerating technology toward a more human automated future.

In the age of AI where speed, scale and scary can simultaenously all be components of the the products we design, we have to change design from a noun to become a very, deliberate verb. We’re entering a Brave New World. And that world requires designers to take on a larger responsibility for the outcomes produced, behavior induced and effect on humanity the intelligent products we design have.