Design Activity

This text describes the artifacts generated by participants when they were prompted to create an exhibit to teach visitors about AI. These artifacts can provide insight into visitors’ priorities and interests in AI-related exhibits, which can then inspire future design research. In this section, we describe the exhibits that participant groups designed. We comment on common design features in Discussion (section 8). We include a few participant-drawn sketches where they add to an understanding of the textual description of the designed exhibit.

 Group 1: AI Paintings & Riddles

Mark (dad) and Ella (age 6) selected the prompt card “Did you know that some AI can do creative things, like write poems or generate paintings?” Ella wanted to create an exhibit that showed that AI could write poems and Mark wanted to create an exhibit that showed AI drawing a picture, so they decided to each create a separate design. Ella took inspiration from one of her favorite exhibits at the museum, which has an auditorium with a spherical projection screen in the middle. She suggested having the screen display a riddle (“question poem”) with multiple choice answers for the audience to choose between. The visitors sitting in the auditorium would have buttons or clickers that they could use to choose an answer to the riddle that was generated by the AI on the screen. Mark situated his exhibit in a hallway. Visitors walking down the hallway could select between different features of a painting—for example, choosing between a landscape vs. a portrait, or selecting color vs. black and white. Based on these inputs, the AI would generate a unique painting that it would project on the wall in the hallway. Visitors could view a “time-lapse” video of the AI generating the painting. Visitors would be able to email themselves a copy of the picture they created.

 Group 2: Drone Showcase

Group 2 picked the prompt, “Did you know that AI devices use sensors to detect things in the world?” Alex (age 10) suggested creating a “drone showcase” exhibit where you could fly a drone around the museum (he was really enthusiastic about drones throughout the workshop). Mimi (age 6) came up with the idea to move drones around in a room to solve a puzzle. This reminded Alex of “mini games, where you have to...get an egg and you have to fly it to the other side of the room without it cracking.” Ricky suggested the idea of using the drone to walk the dog. The group ended up sketching an exhibit where a visitor could fly a drone to bring food and water to a dog.

 Group 3: Competing Robots

Group 3 chose the prompt, “Did you know that some robots move by pre-planning routes, and others simply react to objects in their path?” The group came up with the idea of an exhibit in which two different robots would navigate a maze. One robot would navigate the maze by sensing obstacles and the other would operate according to a visitor-written program. Visitors could use a block-based programming language on an iPad kiosk to program the pre-planned robot. They could then compare the performance of the two robots and discuss the pros and cons of each approach. Group 4: Responsive Box

Group 4 selected the design prompt, “Did you know that some AI systems are often only good at one very specific task—like recognizing a face or turning on a light when motion is detected?” Lauren suggested creating “a little dude that runs away when you put your hand near it.” She suggested using a motion sensor to detect the presence of your hand. Ralph added to this idea, suggesting using speed to modulate the response of the AI. They ended up creating a moving box that sensed hand proximity and speed. If a hand approached it quickly, the box would move away. If it approached slowly, the box would move towards you, and if you touched it, a heart would show up on a touchscreen. If you moved your hand towards the box at medium speed (“just right!”) it would stay still. If you touched it, you would see two hearts.

 Group 5: Family-Friendly Smell Detector

Group 5 picked the prompt, “Did you know that humans play an important role in fine-tuning AI systems?” They designed a “family friendly” exhibit that “little kids would think was fun too.” Visitors would step into a booth where an AI would learn how “humans think different chemicals and pheromones smell.” The exhibit would: “shoot a little scent out and then it would, for the sake of like smaller or younger children, have maybe like a touchscreen with pictures and they could choose between certain things like what it smelled like. So, like tap a picture. And then like a secondary question would come up that said, ‘is this a pleasant smell or is this an unpleasant smell?’ So, it can help the smelling sensor kind of figure out what we think and how we feel about certain scents

 

Charini Robles - Ayudo