Kinda Human / Scope

Dates: August 2018
Team: Scott Dombkowski
Advisors: Stacie Rohrbach and Molly Wright Steenson
Work Type: Academic

This thesis focuses on intimate relationships and how an artificial agent might constructively affect those relationships.

I selected intimate relationships as a context for study because they are often our most defining and determining relationships. They constitute experiences with which almost all humans can relate, and they provide a space for play and reflection. Intimate relationships are also comprised of qualitative dimensions that make us human, such as expression and understanding, that designers typically do not consider when working with artificial agents. Instead, they often address more measurable dimensions like efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. With the ever-increasing influence of artificial agents, I believe there is a need, now more than ever, to interrogate how an agent can positively affect an intimate relationship.

I acknowledge that this focus on the integration of agents into interfaces could prevent me from designing interfaces that positively affect an intimate relationship more than a conversation with a therapist or other analog activities ever could. At the same time, it has helped me define a relevant area of study (i.e., as the artificial becomes more and more closely connected to our everyday lives, it is bound to involve itself in our intimate relationships in ways we cannot predict today).