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When:May 7 Mezzanine level

Mezzanine stage

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Beyond agents: AI as a creative partner

  • Theme:Design craft
  • Topic:AI
  • Topic:UX
  • Topic:Strategy

Our metaphors for AI shape the expectations we set for ourselves and our users: Assistants. Copilots. Agents. What comes next? Come hear about upcoming areas of technical progress, and how they could unlock the potential for AI as a true collaborator. You’ll hear implications for the design choices we’re all making, and get ideas that will 100% totally not become outdated by an industry launch a week after the talk.

    • Joel Lewenstein

      Head of Product Design

      Anthropic

The maximalist theory of minimalism

  • Theme:Design craft
  • Topic:Hardware
  • Topic:Independent
  • Topic:UX

Craftsmen-as-rockstars once strove to stun even the most lavish nobility with their works of obvious complexity and decadence. In comparison, modern design prefers to obscure its opulent perfection of form while couching its works in a philosophy of minimalism. Striking a truce between these natural foes might yield the best results.

    • Keegan McNamara

      Craftsman & Founder

      Mythic Computer Co

Poetry Camera: How to fall back in love with technology

  • Theme:Dev & code
  • Topic:AI
  • Topic:Hardware
  • Topic:UX

Kelin and Ryan, cofounders of Poetry Camera, share their unexpected journey going from designing software to making hardware — with the help of AI. They will be showing demos, prototypes, and the design process for Poetry Camera, and outline their vision for a future of "small tech" powered by AI.

    • Kelin Carolyn Zhang

      Co-founder

      Poetry Camera

    • Ryan Mather

      Co-founder

      Poetry Camera

About the speakers

Joel Lewenstein

He/him

Head of Product Design

Anthropic

Joel leads the product design team at Anthropic, the makers of Claude. He previously led teams at Airtable & Quora.

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Keegan McNamara

He/him

Craftsman & Founder

Mythic Computer Co

Keegan McNamara designs and builds physical objects. His work has been featured in The Verge, designboom, and The Free Press. Once upon a time he wrote software and studied math.

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Kelin Carolyn Zhang

She/her

Co-founder

Poetry Camera

Kelin Carolyn Zhang is a designer and educator creating software with a soul. Her practice currently centers around designing novel interfaces with & for generative AI models. She is a cofounder of Poetry Camera, which is a camera that writes poems of what it sees. She also serves as Adjunct Professor at RISD, teaching AI Software Design Studio in the Industrial Design department. She has over a decade of experience working with companies and clients of all sizes, including Apple, Twitter, Google, Meta, and Reuters. She received a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from MIT.

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Ryan Mather

He/him

Co-founder

Poetry Camera

Ryan is a designer obsessed with play, learning, and inventing. He's one of the creators of Poetry Camera, and the designer at Sudowrite. Earlier, he worked at Google ATAP where he prototyped sci-fi AI hardware. He also created FlipTales, a roleplaying game which was funded on Kickstarter. Before that, he was a product designer at littleBits.

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