Understanding trauma helps craft gentler user experiences.
Design for Real Life
You can't always predict who will use your products, or what emotional state they'll be in when they do. But by identifying stress cases and designing with compassion, you'll create experiences that support more of your users, more of the time.
How Playing Tetris Tames The Trauma Of A Car Crash
Researchers were able to dial down painful recollections of a car crash by having people play the video game Tetris while in the emergency room. The technique makes use of the malleability of memory.
Design Must Learn to Decompose
A meditation on the quiet death of digital things.
Home | Humane by Design
Guidance for designing humane digital products and services focused around digital well-being.
Not everything is ‘trauma’. Language needs to mean something | Aeon Essays
From a broken life to a broken nail, ‘trauma’ has been bleached by overuse. But it names something real – and must be reclaimed
Interface Craft
A working library for those committed to designing with uncommon care.
High-Tech Anthropology® Process Tour
Come learn about the benefits of observing end users, creating and mapping personas, and assessing iterative designs. Additionally, see the other tools we use and visuals we create to capture and distill information that will help us mitigate the risk of a failed end product. These steps build the foundation for user-friendly designs tailored to target persona(s) – for products that are actually adopted (and even enJOYed!) rather than tossed to the side or treated like paperweights.
The New Science of Designing for Humans (SSIR)
The rise of behavioral science and impact evaluation has created a new way for engineering programs and human interactions. <meta property=
“It happened to be the perfect thing”: experiences of generative AI chatbots for mental health
The global mental health crisis underscores the need for accessible, effective interventions. Chatbots based on generative artificial intelligence (AI), like ChatGPT, are emerging as novel solutions, but research on real-life usage is limited. We interviewed nineteen individuals about their experiences using generative AI chatbots for mental health. Participants reported high engagement and positive impacts, including better relationships and healing from trauma and loss. We developed four themes: (1) a sense of ‘emotional sanctuary’, (2) ‘insightful guidance’, particularly about relationships, (3) the ‘joy of connection’, and (4) comparisons between the ‘AI therapist’ and human therapy. Some themes echoed prior research on rule-based chatbots, while others seemed novel to generative AI. Participants emphasised the need for better safety guardrails, human-like memory and the ability to lead the therapeutic process. Generative AI chatbots may offer mental health support that feels meaningful to users, but further research is needed on safety and effectiveness.
“It happened to be the perfect thing”: experiences of generative AI chatbots for mental health
The global mental health crisis underscores the need for accessible, effective interventions. Chatbots based on generative artificial intelligence (AI), like ChatGPT, are emerging as novel solutions, but research on real-life usage is limited. We interviewed nineteen individuals about their experiences using generative AI chatbots for mental health. Participants reported high engagement and positive impacts, including better relationships and healing from trauma and loss. We developed four themes: (1) a sense of ‘emotional sanctuary’, (2) ‘insightful guidance’, particularly about relationships, (3) the ‘joy of connection’, and (4) comparisons between the ‘AI therapist’ and human therapy. Some themes echoed prior research on rule-based chatbots, while others seemed novel to generative AI. Participants emphasised the need for better safety guardrails, human-like memory and the ability to lead the therapeutic process. Generative AI chatbots may offer mental health support that feels meaningful to users, but further research is needed on safety and effectiveness.
Welcome to the Relational Design Lab | LX Cast | 19 comments
Today I am VERY excited to share with all of you about my new home, Relational Design Lab! This R&D studio brings together a number of projects and will, I hope, grow to encompass many more. I imagine this lab as a gathering place for curious people who want to think about systems, and not in the typical mechanistic way they are described and implemented in technology. Instead, we'll feel into living systems, fractal ways of being, where the how is as important as the what. Over time, I hope the Lab will be a home or a waypoint for designers, researchers, community organizations, artists, storytellers, and technologists to explore togetherness together. Our 'theory of change' focuses on paradigm shift. Big change takes practice and possibility. Paradoxically, paradigm shift is a result of many small changes and repetitions in our behaviour and belief systems. We embrace emergence, mutual support, collective practice, and storytelling. One thing feels pretty clear, we need technology that is designed in solidarity with mutual care, does not depend on the whims of big corporations or its surveillance, and is joyful to use. To live in this reality, we also need to consider how business, funding, governance, scale, and context affect our work. We need embodied ways of knowing and sharing knowledge alongside our technical reasoning. And we need to face the reality of the consequences of our actions and those of our ancestors. This is not a project that aims to solve all the world's problems, but instead, to nurture the capacity for doing things together. We support and practice responding with curiosity and care, not with answers or attachment to ideals that no longer make sense amid collapsing systems. We are not "hiring" for this project now but there are many ways to get involved and would welcome opportunities to collaborate. Some of the projects we're holding include Folk Tech, Spacious, SEED Founding, and Relational Source License. We're also developing a very cool workshop process to help other organizations explore relational design through a community-driven futurism process. As ecosystem supporters, we are developing relationships with many aligned groups and projects as well. There will be more communications coming! If this all sounds like something you would like to support, contribute to, keep track of, or develop relationship with, for now you can subscribe to our calendar here https://lnkd.in/gPRFW7zC and message me directly! | 19 comments on LinkedIn
Sensibilities as Knowledge in Design Research
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HCDE Distinguished Lecture with Laura Forlano | Designing Consequences: On Living Well with Machines
