UCLIC Research Seminar Series

Title
Abstract
In this talk, I show how design research offers distinct opportunities to investigate machine learning (ML) through designerly making and philosophical analysis. After positioning design research in this regard, I showcase three design research projects. First, through analysis of existing design research projects, I outline a conceptual vocabulary that allows for a more intuitive grasp on ML for design and analysis. Second, I discuss a co-design workshop in an actual use case that used design research to explicate stakeholder's pre-existing beliefs about their context; offering design implications for how an ML-driven system should be designed. Lastly, I show ongoing research involving a bespoke web application that prompts reflection on notions of selfhood in contemporary information technology systems such as social media or personal genetics. Finally, I reflect on the implications of my PhD research for design research as a field, and what the particular generativity that it evidences tells us about its capacities and constraints.
The two publications I will feature:
Biography
Jesse Josua Benjamin is a PhD candidate in Philosophy of Technology at the University of Twente and visiting scholar at Lancaster University. As an interdisciplinary researcher combining design, computer science and philosophy of technology, Jesse interrogates the ways in which technology shapes how humans see, act in and make sense of their world(s). A particular emphasis is placed in his research on the qualitative changes brought about by emerging information technologies such as machine learning on the one hand, and the often subtle ways such changes actually manifest.