Edinburgh Napier University

  Imbedding artificial intelligence into designed technologies is not new, yet recently there has been a rapid increase in the number of domestic products that claim to be “smart”. The reasons for this are varied but a major contributing factor is the prevalence of smartphones and computational devices that we now carry with us. These devices constantly gather personal data and, in turn, use this information to tailor how they interact with us to predict our behaviours. This paper investigates how artificial intelligence can be designed into everyday domestic products in order to enhance the relationships that humans have with these objects. Considering not just the representation of intelligence as mental arithmetic capacitance but also as behavioural intelligence or, the manner in which the designed object represents its intelligence through physiological action and reaction. The primary focus of our interactions with everyday objects resides on their designed interfaces. The principles of technology interface design have changed very little since the first electronic domestic products of the early nineteen hundreds. Products have historically been designed to fulfil utility needs so our interactions with products have been designed to trigger them to perform their designated tasks. This practice can no longer be considered appropriate when the interactions that we have with everyday products are increasingly as social as much as they are utilitarian. In this paper we discuss the design of AI domestic products under three perspectives: being intelligent; being human; being machine. From these viewpoints will emerge a framework for the reconsideration of tangible interface design.