AI product development is overwhelmingly framed as a problem of technical scale and muscle, and researchers are racing to onboard new work automations and best practices. But as many researchers know, there is more to solve with AI than enhancing technological capability. In this talk, Dr. Teruko Mitsuhara focuses on the impact we can have when we frame core challenges in genAI as relational problems, such as the atomization of content, lack of alignment across functional teams, or ethical problems around emergent technologies and the diverse communities who engage with them.
Speaker
Dr. Teruko Mitsuhara is a linguistic anthropologist and UX research manager at Adobe. Her research spans from religious utopias in India and the US to design research in the technology industry. She’s a cat lady and thought you should know that.
Discussants
Driven by their background in cultural anthropology, Es Braziel uses research and strategy as a tool to build equity into product development processes and outcomes. They honed their craft conducting market strategy with clients including Google, Meta, PlayStation, and Snap, before working on responsible product innovation at Microsoft. Currently, they are a Staff Experience Researcher on the Product Equity team at Adobe, where they focus on expanding Adobe’s mission of “Creativity for all” through driving systems-level change and equitable research practices across the company.
Ben Hutchinson is a researcher, developer and thought leader on Responsible AI with experience doing inter-disciplinary research on how to make AI trustworthy, transparent, auditable, and accountable.
Yuko Okubo is a sociocultural anthropologist with experience in conducting UX research, design research, and ethnography in IT. Her academic research focused on exploring the concept of “multiculturalism” in a multiethnic school and neighborhood in Japan. She has applied her research skills to product development and design across various problem spaces, including education solutions, enterprise solutions, and communication. Most recently, she was a user researcher at Grammarly. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
