If you are following me, you may know that I am trying to merge design thinking, systems thinking and futures thinking in my research. You may also know if you read or listened to me that one of my critics in engineering research and education is about the lack of creativity, space for failure, and obsession with problem-solving without the long view and collaborative efforts which results in unsustainable systems and repeating problems.
My work at Stanford was mainly about bringing these three mindsets together as a framework to address these critics and enable more sustainable and human-centered cyber-physical systems. And I am always on the look to find better ways to make this framework easy to use or have a bigger impact. I wrote and published about this last year:
While I have a lot of questions and constantly learn more about all the downsides of large language models (unethical/questionable data quality, high energy consumption, labor/workers rights etc.), I am also aware of the investment and hard work that is already put into generative AI. It is inevitable that we will work with these systems one way or other and I personally needed to search for a way to start this collaboration. One very popular tool, ChatGPT, has been quite disappointing for me in that sense. It does not provide me with anything useful because I cannot trust the answers. It might be because I do science and I can not really deal/work with half-true information. (Though I cannot find any use for half-true information, it looks like that some people are happy with what they get). We will see how text generators will evolve but I do not see them being part of my daily life in the near future. That said, I will certainly keep my eyes on the developments.
Now, it has been some months that I am exploring designing some concepts together with image generator artificial intelligence. My understanding and prompt engineering abilities increased over time and these last weeks I am quite happy with the result of our collaborations.
I think this kind of interaction can be very beneficial when we blend design thinking, systems thinking and futures thinking. I am certainly adding it to my toolbox. I can say that it increased my creativity, resulted with interesting dreams, and is changing my daily routine. I am looking forward on how it will make my research work, teaching practices, and look at to the future.
I am preparing some useful information to share with my contacts, colleagues, and students. Before that, I think it is now time to share some of these designs with my network. Thus, I created a new Instagram account and started to share some of them from this account. You should definitely check it out and follow if you are interested to see my development.
If you are interested to learn more, discuss with me your thoughts, show interest in the resources I am creating/collecting, or are curious about my next course which will teach both the framework and tools to operationalize design thinking, systems thinking, and future studies; you know how to reach me out. Send an e-mail, message on LinkedIn/Instagram or use the contact form etc. We have a lot to do and I am looking forward to seeing together what we will come up with!
Didem Gürdür Broo 