D.S. Murray-Rust
Please Note
59 records found
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Beyond ephemerality
Boundary objects and the plasticity of listening in collaborative design
Applied Speculations in the Baggage Hall
Transdisciplinary Thinking around Robotic Work Futures
Seeing Each Other at Work
Speculative Artifacts and Exegesis for Algorithmic Visibility
Co-speculating with AI
From prompts to practices
This paper presents a vocabulary for co-speculation with AI, developed through an experimental design studio with 55 postgraduate students who used generative AI tools to explore more-than-human design practices of decentering. The vocabulary spans multiple scales of interaction—from individual prompting acts to extended collaborative sessions—serving descriptive, analytic, and generative functions. Whilst it was developed through the specific context of decentering practices, we argue that this vocabulary is transferable to diverse design domains. It offers designers and researchers a framework for more reflective and intentional engagements with AI, contributing to emerging discussions on how design practice evolves when speculation becomes a shared activity between humans and machines.
Small AI
A degrowth imaginary for designing with/for artificial intelligence
This paper presents Small AI as a conceptual lever for designers to resist the ‘bigger is better’ trend in the discourse and development of Generative AI. We explore different types of Small AI: initially in relation to the size of models, as smaller models require less computational resources for both training and inference, thus implying a smaller ecological footprint. However, we extend the meaning of smallness to apply to political, epistemic and cultural domains as well. In this vein, the paper posits Small AI as an imaginary-in-the-making, and a rallying concept for an alternative innovation agenda that holds, in the spirit of E.F. Schumacher’s famous dictum, that it is small (AI) and not big (AI) that is beautiful. The paper draws conclusions for those designing with/for AI, positing Small AI as a form of ‘unmaking’ with which designers may re-articulate the entangled relations between users, computation, and worlds.
Interfacing in Crisis
Five Parables for Interface Thinking
What happens to interfaces as generative AI disrupts the conditions of mediation, legibility, and control we have come to expect? This essay traces three fractures: a collapse of visibility, where interfaces obscure as much as they reveal; a collapse of form, where interfaces dissolve into language and prediction; and a collapse of positionality, where it becomes unclear who is thinking or speaking. In response, we offer five parables, five metaphors of physical transformation, from which to reconsider what interfaces might become.
Socio-Technical Fiction and Legal Exegesis
Exploring the AI Act in the Near Future of Agentic AI
AI systems are increasingly embedded in workplace platforms, where they infer performance, attention, and affect from everyday traces. The EU AI Act regulates such systems through risk categories and governance concepts, yet it remains unclear how these concepts operationalize when AI becomes an agentic infrastructure. We present a near-future performance review fiction accompanied by short legal annotations. Rather than assessing compliance, the annotations function as legal exegesis: They mark where oversight, contestability, and sensitive inference shift meaning when enacted through interfaces, procedures, and cross-referencing agents. The provocation foregrounds three dynamics: The chameleonic aspects of risk categories, oversight collapsing into recursive system input, and sensitive domains becoming inferable through proxy data traces. We argue that "fiction and exegesis"offers a situated method for interrogating legal governance before such systems stabilize in practice.
Using a human-centred design approach, journey mapping, we map the victim's experience, looking at the case of the Dutch criminal justice system. The journey map shows what interactions and non-interactions the victim encounters. We then analyse the map using a feminist theory of power, the Matrix of Domination, to explore how power impacts the victim's experience, both on an interpersonal and structural level.
In our study, we find that victims initially hold power, but that they lose it almost entirely when a case is filed. This lack of power results in the victim not having control of their journey in the criminal justice system, and results in different types of harm. We argue that if we want to improve victims' experiences, mapping power allows us to move beyond individual interactions and focus on systemic, structural changes. ...
Using a human-centred design approach, journey mapping, we map the victim's experience, looking at the case of the Dutch criminal justice system. The journey map shows what interactions and non-interactions the victim encounters. We then analyse the map using a feminist theory of power, the Matrix of Domination, to explore how power impacts the victim's experience, both on an interpersonal and structural level.
In our study, we find that victims initially hold power, but that they lose it almost entirely when a case is filed. This lack of power results in the victim not having control of their journey in the criminal justice system, and results in different types of harm. We argue that if we want to improve victims' experiences, mapping power allows us to move beyond individual interactions and focus on systemic, structural changes.
Prompting Realities
Exploring the Potentials of Prompting for Tangible Artifacts
Data is central to AI performance, yet its curation remains an invisible and labour-intensive process, often leading to biases and reliability issues. While HCI has explored methods to improve data work, a growing body of research embraces data imperfections in an artistic vein to provoke reflection on human-AI relations. This workshop examines "Data Craft"- practices that creatively manipulate data to challenge conventional AI narratives and lower barriers to public engagement. By framing data craft as a boundary practice, we explore its potential to foster dialogue on AI capabilities, limitations, and societal impact. The workshop will investigate how data craft can be systematically integrated into participatory AI efforts, moving beyond artistic spaces to inform public debate. Through hands-on exploration, we aim to uncover strategies for leveraging data craft to engage diverse communities in shaping AI discourse.
As Artificial Intelligence continues to permeate everyday life, concerns over its societal consequences are becoming increasingly pressing. Anticipatory practices have emerged as central to responsible AI development, offering ways to envision and mitigate potential harms. While policymakers engage with anticipation through forecasting and risk assessment, speculative design offers an alternative, more experiential approach to also fosters public engagement and critical reflection. However, most speculative explorations focus on future possibilities, often neglecting the continuum between these and past phenomena. In this pictorial, we argue for integrating historical perspectives into speculative design to enrich anticipatory work on AI. Through a week-long international summer school, we engaged with the legacy of phrenology and the work of Cesare Lombroso. Using this as a springboard for speculation, we illustrate that incorporating historical trajectories into speculative design can deepen understanding of current dilemmas around AI, but dedicated methodological resources are still needed to achieve this value.
Framing the (in)visible
Insights into Visibility Practices of Remote Knowledge Workers
Cosmic Troubleshooting
Exploring Third-Person View for Error Handling in Telerobotic Planetary Infrastructure Maintenance
Unpacking Human-AI interactions
From Interaction Primitives to a Design Space
Towards just futures
A feminist approach to speculative design for policy making
Decentralised creative economies and transactional creative communities
New value discovery in the performing arts