An Illustrated Field Guide to Fungal AI for Designers

When we are designing digital technologies, we are often inspired by patterns we see elsewhere and seek to replicate them, as metaphors and analogies, in an effort to make the interfaces to those technologies easier to use or more understandable for the user (Norman, 2013). This is as true for interaction design as it is for product design, two fields which are increasingly interwoven (Rowland, Goodman, Charlier, Light & Liu, 2015). We are moving towards a world of smart domestic products and devices, networked artefacts that connect both to us and to one another, imbued with the vestiges of ‘intelligence’. Consequently, it is likely that we will continue to need to utilize metaphor and analogy to make these devices intelligible to their users (ibid.).

Within interaction design, the discussion of the role of metaphor and analogy at the interface has formed an extensive part of an ongoing debate about the nature of what some term ‘Natural User Interfaces’ or Reality-Based Interaction (Jacob et al., 2008). However, as we think through how future intelligent devices will interact with us, we might question exactly how notions of intelligence are constructed. Where do we find the examples of intelligence that we draw upon, for our inspiration and our metaphors, and what are the assumptions and implications hidden within these metaphors?...