User Experience Design for AI, 3 credits

Main field of study with advanced study

Degree of Bachelor or Degree of Bachelor of Science in Engineering or the equivalent of 180 Swedish credit points or 180 ECTS credits at an accredited university. English 6. Exemption of the requirement in Swedish is granted.

The course is given as a single subject course.

The aim for the course is to introduce students to the diverse challenges and opportunities that emerge in user experience design when a product, service, or experience includes artificial intelligence components in either a structural, agentive, or evaluative role. At the end of the course, the student will gain a practical and theoretical understanding of what processes, methods, and techniques should be considered when designing human-centered AI-augmented experiences.

Following successful completion of the course the student should be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

• describe the opportunities and challenges that artificial intelligence brings to user experience design
• identify whether AI plays a structural, agentive, or evaluative role in an experience

Skills and ability

• demonstrate ability to critically identify which approaches, methods and techniques are relevant to frame and solve issues of human-AI interaction in AI-augmented experiences
• demonstrate ability to apply user experience methods and techniques that impact on all aspects, structural, agentive, and evaluative, of how AI contributes to the experience

Judgement and approach

• describe the contributions that user experience design can bring to the design of human-centered experiences where artificial intelligence is a key component

The course consists of three parts that introduce the structural, agentive, and evaluative aspects of artificial intelligence and their meaning and impact on user experience design. Each part provides a general framing of the specific topic, and discusses what implications the topic has for the design of AI-augmented or AI-supported experiences in terms of identification, use, or modification of appropriate processes, methods, tools and techniques from user experience theory and practice.

1. Information architecture and structural AI (1 credits)
Part one deals with the conceptual and structural issues that need to be considered when designing AI-enhanced experiences and with the systemic role of AI as an environment-shaping agent and as a new design material.

2. Interaction design and agentive AI (1 credits)
Part two deals with artificial intelligence as an agentive part of the environment. It introduces basic design principles for human-AI interaction and human-AI collaboration, and product- and interface-level issues for AI-enhanced experiences using textual, gestural, voice, and other digiphysical interfaces.

3. Algorithmic experiences and evaluative AI (1 credits)
Part three introduces the concept of algorithmic experiences and the evaluative role of AI in large-scale processes where AI provides human actors with information for subsequent action. It discusses issues of cognitive and algorithmic bias, the building and maintaining of trust, and ways to prevent or fix the potential misalignment between human and software actors.

Each part consists of lectures and of an assignment broadly centered on the topic discussed in the part of the course and to be carried out by students individually. Assignments will be peer-reviewed first and then discussed with the teachers and class using a design critique approach.

The course will consist of scheduled online lectures, audio / video materials, guest lectures providing hands-on insights on the relationship between user experience and artificial intelligence, and individual assignments supported by supervision.

The course is examined through written assignments that are performed individually.

If there are special reasons, the examiner may make exceptions from the specified examination format and allow a student to be examined in another way. Special reasons can e.g. be study support for students with disabilities.

Course evaluation is part of the course. This evaluation offers guidance in the future development and planning of the course. Course evaluation is documented and made available to the students.