Event

POSTPONED – DI Hybrid Research Seminar – Iryna Kuksa

Click here to book your tickets for this hybrid event.

Design for personalisation in the age of AI

Excessive consumption drives climate change. Humanity has reached the point where current consumer lifestyles are not sustainable, and this status quo will need to be disrupted if we are to slow down climate change. Personalisation is a technique which today, amongst other purposes, uses machine learning algorithms and personal data harvesting to prompt people to engage in a range of financial and social activities that often encourage us to consume more. It creates wealth for businesses and brings satisfaction to customers. We rely on personalised messaging and allow AI select information for our personal newsfeeds which contributes to the overall personalisation economy. Today, personalisation is most often deliberately designed to promote consumption, but that purpose is not preordained. Designers, as professionals, could instead repurpose personalisation processes to promote ‘greener’ consumption choices and lifestyles or even to reduce consumption all together. In this talk, Dr Kuksa will discuss the concept of ‘green personalisation’ and the pathways to inform new design methodologies to reduce consumption and the resulting environmental harm.

Bio

 

Dr Iryna Kuksa is a cross-disciplinary, practice-based researcher, author and community builder. She is Director of the Design Research Centre and Senior Research Fellow in Nottingham School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University. Her innovative approach to understanding the role of design in social media and consumer culture led to the launch of a new research field – design for personalisation. She holds a PhD from the University of Warwick and to date, she published three landmark books titled ‘Making Sense of Space: The Design and Experience of Virtual Spaces as a Tool for Communication’ (Elsevier 2014), ‘Design for Personalisation’ (Routledge 2017) and ‘Understanding Personalisation: New Aspects of Design and Consumption’ (Elsevier 2022). She has recently been awarded an AHRC Innovation Scholars in Design grant to work with the leading strategic design consultancy Nile to devise pathways for businesses in the financial sector to become ‘inclusive by default’. In 2023, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

 

Running Order

16.00 – Welcome by John Vines and Talk by Iryna Kuksa
16.40 – Q&A
17.00 – End

In-person: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Online: Zoom

Please note limited seats are available at Inspace for in-person audiences, so please book tickets in advance. For those joining online please visit the online event page for the Zoom joining link and password.

For inquiries about accessibility, please contact the DI team at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk or visit the Access webpage for more information about the venue: https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/venue-access/


Inspace or Zoom