The promise of generative AI technologies is seductive to product leaders: frictionless research in which...
Tag: automation
The Ethnography of a ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organization’ (DAO): De-mystifying Algorithmic Systems
This paper details ethnographic methods, experiences, and insights from an ethnographer and an industry engaged complex systems engineer in how to study resilience in blockchain-based DAOs as a novel field site....
Calibrating Agency: Human-Autonomy Teaming and the Future of Work amid Highly Automated Systems
This paper explores how the design of everyday interactions with artificial intelligence in work systems relates to broader issues of interest to social scientists and ethicists: namely human well-being and social inequality. The paper uses experience designing human interactions with highly...
Designing Good Jobs: Participatory Ethnography and Prototyping in Service-oriented Work Ecosystems
Three service design projects, in hospitality, finance, and health care, highlight how to design for agency in the workplace, including the implementation of automated and data-driven tools. Inspired by Tacchi, Slater, and Hearn's work on ethnographic action research, Amartya Sen's capabilities...
Pulp Friction: Creating Space for Cultural Context, Values, and the Quirkiness of Humanity in AI Engagement
A design executive who has led several multidisciplinary teams and organizations at global companies such as...
Autonomous Individuals in Autonomous Vehicles: The Multiple Autonomies of Self-Driving Cars
We take the polysemy at the heart of autonomy as our focus, and explore how changing notions of autonomy are experienced and expressed by users of self-driving cars. Drawing from work-practice studies and sociomaterial approaches to understanding technologies, we discuss how driving as a task is...
Foundational AI: Navigating a Shifting Terrain
New deployments of foundational AI models in digital products have expanded public engagement with synthetic...
Empowered, Confident, and Prepared: Driving Chatbot Product Vision through User Research
This case study explores how a series of customer site visits to two international service centers drove design recommendations for a chatbot building platform that could encourage positive agent-chatbot collaboration. The first part of the case focuses on the research undertaken by a team of user...
Reconfiguring Work in the Age of AI
What is the nature of expertise and work? How are they redefined, practiced, and personified as waves of...
Boundary Crossings: Collaborative Robots and Human Workers
Agency and automation is explored through three case studies of the use of Cobots – collaborative robots – in three different auto production firms. The business challenges faced by these firms include labor shortages, quality control and reduction of waste. The Cobot solution resulted in...