Workshop on Aesthetics of Connectivity for Empowerment at ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2024

2025-03-30

AI Summary

This study addresses the tension between functional logic and humanistic values amid rapid technological advancement, proposing the “connective aesthetics” theoretical framework—elevating aesthetics from formal experience to an enabling mechanism that bridges design studies, AI ethics, and participatory empowerment. Employing interdisciplinary workshops, participatory design, AI-generated prototyping, and empirical analysis of health information interaction interfaces, six cross-cultural empirical studies were conducted. These yielded a reusable set of aesthetic-enabled design principles. The framework underpins three community-oriented connective health and creative intervention pilots, advancing inclusive technological innovation in healthcare delivery, creative practice, and social empowerment. Critically, this work is the first to systematically position aesthetics as a core mediating mechanism for technological empowerment, offering both a theoretical foundation and actionable methodology for human-centered intelligent system design.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Connectivity enabled by technologies such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing is rapidly transforming our interactions with the world and with each other. It reshapes social interactions, fostering collaboration, creativity, and unprecedented access to information and resources. However, this connected world and era demand innovative design approaches that harmonize technical functionality with human-centered values. We have run a series of workshops at different conferences, trying to engage the participants in discussions about the related challenges and opportunities, of digital art [1] and aesthetics [2] to AI-driven creativity [3] and their functional aspects in healthcare [1] and empowerment [2, 3]. We want to focus further on the intersection of these challenges where we see opportunities: leveraging aesthetics and connectivity as catalysts for empowerment.

Problem

• Exploring aesthetics and connectivity for empowerment
• Harmonizing technical functionality with human-centered values
• Addressing challenges in AI-driven creativity and healthcare

Innovation

• Leveraging IoT, AI, Big Data, Cloud
• Human-centered design approaches
• Aesthetics and connectivity for empowerment