Design International

Artificial intelligence is more-or-less covertly entering our lives and houses, embedded into products and services that are acquiring novel roles and agency on users. The design discipline and the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field are just beginning to explore the wicked relationship between Design and AI, looking for a definition of its borders, still blurred and ever changing. The book approaches this issue from a human-centered standpoint, proposing designerly reflections on AI-infused products. It addresses one main guiding question: what are the design implications of embedding intelligence into everyday objects?

Which are the main research funds currently accessed by the Department of Design? What are the topics explored through them and which are the interconnections with the Department core research activities? Also, what are the research products delivered, the reached outcomes, and the expected impacts BY these research projects? The book synthesises the results of a qualitative analysis conducted over 32 research projects coordinated or participated in by the researchers of the Department in the timeframe 2014-mid 2021. The results of the analysis confirm the high-level attractiveness of the Department research profile on core topics such as design methodology, service design, and health.

The volume investigates a wide sphere of issues referring to an extended concept of “matter” – the word matter intended not only as materials as such but also of content and relationships – through design actions, approaches, processes, tools and methodologies employed in different areas and with different objectives, yet united by the desire to intercept the current shift, sometimes reinventing and sometimes evolving programmatically over time to embrace the changed framework.

Interior design is less and less reduced to the mere physical component of space and is instead increasingly projected towards an ‘environmental system’ made up of space, services, communication, and technology. The book highlights the close interconnections between the design of spaces, the creation of services, the application of communication systems, and the exploitation of technologies, allowing us to reveal the tensions and interactions that are unleashed depending on the prevalence of one or another design discipline and the scale at which they take place.

This book offers a key for reinterpreting interior design as a whole, in light of the narrative component of a kind of exhibition design that constantly addresses the measurement of time, which becomes the founding variable to be dealt with on the level of a project. Commenting on the evolution of exhibition design, the volume outlines its future sceneries, arising as an unicum from the perspective of the reflection on the role and the developments of this interior design branch.