Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life
Summary
Asking after the dynamics of artificial intelligence's extraordinary recent rise recalls Hemingway's famous line about going bankrupt: "In two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." That combination underscores the emergence of many technologies, of course. It creeps up on us, and then is suddenly moving at speed, everywhere. This makes it hard for cities and places to work with the grain of tech, in order to produce equitable or sustainable outcomes. Although we rarely do it, tech asks us to step back and ask the deeper questions lurking behind all the noise. In this talk I'll describe how everyday technologies, digital and physical combined, define how we live together; how they tend to articulate what we stand for as a society, or how our cities work — and what's on the table now. Drawing together inspiring projects and cases ranging from Norway to Japan, and from new cities to reimagined regions, I'll suggest how we might align design practices in order to address our contemporary shared challenges, like climate breakdown, social cohesion, and sweeping demographic changes. As AI moves beyond shuffling playlists or improving grammar and starts coordinating mobility, energy, and water systems, or how housing is allocated or buildings are made, we must rapidly figure out how design, governance, and community best understand and take advantage of these new distributed, decentralised and collaborative technologies. In doing so, we might well challenge our preconceptions of technology, economy, and community themselves.
Key Insights
-
•
Technology like cars has irreversibly shaped urban sprawl and city form, often with negative health and environmental outcomes.
-
•
AI’s progress is gradual then sudden, necessitating proactive systemic design before widespread adoption.
-
•
Design must consider multiple interconnected scales: individual, service, city, region, and global.
-
•
Effective AI design requires balancing technical optimization with broader social, cultural, and environmental contexts.
-
•
Soft eyes—the ability to zoom between detailed instances and larger systems—is a crucial skill for designers integrating AI.
-
•
Current AI and digital platforms, like ride sharing, often worsen urban problems by incentivizing more cars, despite individual convenience.
-
•
Systemic containment and participatory governance are vital to handle AI’s influence on critical infrastructures like mobility and energy.
-
•
Design can amplify social fabric, as demonstrated by Oslo’s bike sharing scheme involving prisoner rehabilitation, linking social justice with infrastructure.
-
•
Resource constraints for green technologies, like electrification and batteries, highlight the need for AI to optimize sustainable material use.
-
•
Cultural imagination techniques, including speculative design and fiction, help anticipate AI’s broader societal impacts beyond technical solutions.
Notable Quotes
"Technology affects cities directly and profoundly, shaping how we live, work, and play."
"The car is probably one of the most negative technologies we’ve introduced at scale."
"When asked how he went bankrupt, he said in two ways: gradually and then suddenly — that’s how technology evolves."
"Design is not really about problem solving; it’s about cultural imagination."
"Can we build AI systems that foreground social fabric and enable civil conversations around shared resources?"
"Soft eyes means zooming between the instance and the system, between the tree and the forest."
"We need distributed, shared, and participatory technologies for common good outcomes."
"If we don’t design AI thoughtfully now, it will be too late when it suddenly hits us."
"Designing a chair means considering its next larger context: the room, the house, the environment."
"Culture, fiction, and art allow us to rehearse and imagine dangerous or extreme futures safely before they happen."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Sponsor sessions are not sales pitches; they are content-rich and free to anyone who wants to attend."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 9, 2022
"We want more practical case studies showing how specific teams approached problems and what they learned."
Ariel KennanCivic Design in 2022
January 13, 2022
"No amount of bringing even President Obama to sign paperwork would have changed what really needed to happen."
Mariah Hay Marina Martin Husani Oakley Eduardo OrtizBUILD: Discussion
June 14, 2018
"Sometimes accommodating 20% of users with special needs improves the experience for the entire 100%."
Lija HoganContexts of Use: A Framework for Connection
December 9, 2021
"Feedback is a system. It's not just a pile of comments. It needs to be choreographed, timed, sequenced, and aimed to move the work."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"Some product managers just skipped getting customers involved in the development process at all."
Veevi RosensteinBuilding for Scale: Creating the Zendesk UX Research Practice
January 8, 2024
"Sometimes it's just not even related to the research skills, sometimes relationships really matter."
Megan Blocker Mujtaba Hameed Victor UdoewaPanel: Excellence in Impact
March 25, 2024
"Systems thinking can help us design more explicitly for resilience, as seen in distributed manufacturing of PPE during the pandemic."
Sheryl CababaExpanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
February 23, 2023
"Prioritization is one of those fractal topics that can go from the micro to the macro level."
Harry Max Jim MeyerPrioritization for Leaders (2nd of 3 seminars)
June 27, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What challenges do AI hallucinations present, and how should designers handle factual reliability?
What new workflows or tools have been effective in bridging the gap between design, engineering, and product teams using AI?
How did the concept and language of 'jobs' emerge alongside industrialization and corporate labor structures?