Why it matters
AI is increasingly shaping our lives.
There’s a general sentiment of people growing critical of their lack of agency and control in algorithmic interactions and seeking improved transparency, empowerment, and ethical design in the digital landscape. While AI as computationally and socially complex systems can feel elusive, the way people interact with said models is through designed, visible (often visual) user interfaces. Its real-life impacts, harms & joys all play out / are mediated through / unfold along the interface’s affordances and elements. The UX/UI of algorithmic systems are a bridge between intention and impact; the touchpoint between abstract design principles and people’s lived experiences.
Browse the live research board on Miro
How we did it
Re-Imagining Algorithmic Interactions
Through participatory workshops, we co-created a collection of 20+ provotypes - evoking themes of meaningful participation, agency, mindful friction, constestability, computational literacy, plurality of needs, agonistic design, ecological impact, democratic values and more - to serve as catalysts for critical reflection and dialogue on how interface affordances of AI systems shape our individual and collective behavior.
Browse the library or add your own provotype
Provotyping Towards a Feminist UX of UI - Gallery Overview
Output
What we made
Project Preface
Toward a Feminist UX of AI: Indexing + Imagining Supportive Design Patterns for Algorithmic Systems
Most thinking about how to design for AI originates within the commercial context of big tech companies - at times operating under 'attention economy' business models and mostly prioritizing a specific set of values (e.g. efficiency, profitability, growth, and scale) that may not align with users’ values and best interests.
This is the breeding ground that UX best practices, conventions, and common frameworks flow out of, and It has come to dominate our thinking models around AI and technology at large.
While critique is broadly aligned on what we don’t want (deceptive patterns), there is less work available that identifies and imagines alternatives & new perspectives outside of these conventions; that which we do want.
Library of Provotypes
The provotype library is a co-created and community-led collection of 20+ provotypes that imagine, provoke and propose alternative ways of interacting with AI systems informed by Feminist HCI principles.
Each idea is framed as a what-if question and supported by a speculative wireframe that illustrates the idea visually. Their aim is not to prescribe ‘patterns’ or ‘best practices’, but to open up potential pathways for design and conversation beyond the limited controls, familiar affordances, and commercial design norms of current AI interfaces. Explore the collection below, dig deeper within their pages to learn more, or submit your own.
UI + Wireframing Kit on Figma
An invitation to continue building to provotype library
To support you in the visualization step, we’re open-sourcing the components we used ourselves for creating the speculative wireframes in the provotype library.
This way you can make your own provotypes and focus on the idea rather than finding the visual elements.
Related projects.
(2019-25©)
