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Salon Participatory ML

On 5 September, ThingsCon will team up again with the Human Values for Smarter Cities project to organize a Salon linked to the research project. This time, we are guests at Marineterrein in Amsterdam. We focus this meetup (and workshop) on participatory design for machine learning.

Don Quichot in the Smart City?
In this ThingsCon Salon, we will explore the changing roles of designers in contemporary developments involving human values and smart city technologies. As Kristina Höök and Jonas Löwgren suggest, when faced with complex sociotechnical fabric that includes AI, designers should consider their work as “interventions into ongoing transformations over which they have limited control” (Höök & Löwgren, 2021). What implications do this statement and our experiences in state-of-the-art participatory design projects have for our work?

Workshop

We will start with a workshop in which we redesign an existing enforcement computer vision system with AI, not by focusing on efficiency or effectiveness. Instead, we focus on AI that helps improve citizens’ opportunities to prevent making mistakes or making appeals.

Mapping Use-time Contestability Loops

Designing urban AI systems can be an overwhelming task. There are many parts and actions to consider, and keeping them all in your head is hard. When we want to design these systems responsibly, we must consider them as a whole. Furthermore, when we want to ensure the contestability of the system at use-time, we need to be able to “see” the system to figure out where best to intervene. In this exercise, we take a technique from the field of service design called “service blueprints” and use it to map out our system and its contestability loop at use-time.

The workshop runs from 16:00 to 18:00 and will be dedicated to a workshop shaped and moderated by Kars Alfrink, a postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft, specializing in contestable AI. The workshop has limited capacity.

Design by Leon de Korte

Meetup

After a break for drinks and food, we will continue with the evening program from 19:00 to 21:00. Three speakers will discuss the workshop results and share their thoughts on the topic.

  • Evelien Zengerink from the City of Amsterdam Computer Vision team
  • Vera van der Burg, PhD at Delft University of Technology in exploring AI as tools for self-reflection *
  • Geke van Dijk, strategy director at STBY, a pioneering service design studio

(* Vera unfortunately has to cancel her talk due to family circumstances)

The ThingsCon Salon will take place on 5 September 2024 from 16:00 to 21:30 in Amsterdam Marineterrein. We are guest at AMS Institute / Responsible Sensing Lab.
(Kattenburgerstraat 5, Building 027W, 1018 JA Amsterdam)

RSVP

Please RSVP via these Meetup-pages:
workshop (+ meetup) (limited capacity 20 participants)
meetup only

Speakers

The speakers of this Salon.

Kars Alfink

Kars Alfrink is a designer, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of emerging technologies, social progress, and the built environment.

Currently, Kars is a postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on contestable artificial intelligence.

Before coming to Delft, Kars was active as a design consultant, design entrepreneur, and design community organizer for 15+ years.

Some highlights include co-founding and coordinating Tech Solidarity NL, a grassroots community of Dutch tech workers who seek to advance the design and development of more just and egalitarian technology; founding and co-directing Hubbub, a boutique playful design agency; and initiating and co-curating the Dutch offshoot of This Happened, a series of events about the stories behind interaction design.

Kars has worked as an educator and researcher at the Utrecht School of the Arts and as an interaction designer at several web agencies before that.

Kars holds an MA in interaction design from the Utrecht School of the Arts (2002), and a PhD from Delft University of Technology (2024). He lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Evelien Zengerink

Evelien is Business Analyst at the Computer Vision Team of City of Amsterdam. This team aims to devise image recognition tools that support. For the responsible development of this technology, the Amsterdam municipality considers it important to involve residents. Therefore, a citizen panel is intensively involved in the development of the scan bicycle. The citizen panel consists of involved Amsterdammers, who contribute to the deployment of this technology from different backgrounds

Vera van der Burg

Vera is an artist, researcher, and Ph.D. candidate at the Technical University in Delft. Her research focus and artistic practice lies in investigating how AI can be integrated into creative processes, particularly as a reflexive tool for makers. She aims to develop slower, smaller, and more intimate approaches to working with AI in creative practices, offering a responsible alternative to the current use of large, generative AI models.

Vera holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a master’s degree in fine arts and design from the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Currently, she is engaged with the designing intelligence lab at TU Delft and serves as a researcher-in-residence at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Vera’s work encompasses publications, workshops, and visual art-based installations, which have been featured at events such as Dutch Design Week, Salone del Mobile, Highlight Delft, and conferences like Designing Interactive Systems and the Design Research Society.

Geke van Dijk

Geke (Pronounced “Hey-kuh”) is STBY’s jetpack. As STBY’s Strategy Director, she is well versed in steering research projects on challenging topics and leading us to explore fresh contexts with new clients. She is a pioneer in Service Design since she published her PhD on co-producing service experiences in 2007. Geke loves setting the right circumstances for highly collaborative teamwork with colleagues, clients and international partners, while also making sure to maintain a shared focus on meaningful change.

Geke clicks to focus on the big social and ecological issues of our time, and tries to make a difference by contributing to systemic change processes that are ultimately the focus of our projects at STBY. As a pioneer and seasoned design researcher, Geke is keen to help others flourish through mentoring and coaching. Developing toolkits and playbooks is also a way she likes to combine her pioneering spirit and passion for capacity building and knowledge sharing. 

When she is not driving the team forward, you can find Geke surging ahead in the swimming pool. If she wasn’t a design researcher, Geke would be a Gardener or a Ninja.

Partners

Human Values for Smart Cities

(Image adapted from Contestability Loops for Public AI, concept Kars Alfrink, designed by Leon de Korte)