Upcoming event · San Diego
Design@Large: Implications of AI for the design of future interactive systems
When: Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 4:00 PM (Pacific)
Where: Online
Hosted by: UX Speakeasy
Cost: Ticketed
Design@Large is a UC San Diego course powered by The Design Lab that is open to the public.
About This Talk
This talk will start with a pragmatic question: What are the implications of recent advances in code generation and other AI capabilities for the design of future interactive systems? My group has been investigating this question in a number of different application areas, from games that modify their behavior at runtime to tools that help physical therapists prescribe mixed-reality exercises and programming environments for end users and experts. In each case, code generation enables new interactions, but also has important limitations.
We will then shift to an epistemic question: What are the impacts of AI advances on the ways we generate new knowledge through our research? What should an impactful HCI systems research project look like as building working systems becomes substantially easier? I argue that we should ask more of our projects and papers as implementation becomes less of a bottleneck: we can be more rigorous in our exploration of design spaces and in our evaluations, and we may need to develop new research methods along the way.
About Our Speakers
Björn Hartmann is an Associate Professor in EECS at UC Berkeley where he holds the Paul and Judy Gray Alumni Presidential Chair in Engineering Excellence. He is broadly interested in tools to support human ingenuity, across a number of domains including design, programming and engineering. He is a member of the CHI Academy and his research has received numerous Best Paper Awards at top Human-Computer Interaction conferences. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University in 2009, and received degrees in Digital Media Design, Communication, and Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.
For online ticket holders please follow this link for the live stream:
https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/96276700737?pwd=eLfLgneg8TW7rnnUtChwpNA0fuhaOt.1
How to get to the Design and Innovation Building on the UC San Diego campus
Click here for information about transportation options to get to the Design and Innovation Building.
About This Series
This fall, we're asking: what will the university be in 20 years?
AI is reshaping the economy faster than institutions can adapt. Career paths are unrecognizable. Credentials that were supposed to be portable lose meaning overnight. And yet institutions move slowly.
This speaker series brings together people working on that gap. Researchers and practitioners designing new models of education, rethinking what credentials actually signal, and asking hard questions about what institutions need to become. Some work inside universities trying to change them. Others build alternatives from outside. Across five sessions, we will share time with thought leaders examining institutional futures with hiring practitioners working in industry right now.
How to Start by Jodi Kantor is the core reading for the course. Drawing on years of reporting on work and ambition, Kantor offers a practical framework for figuring out what to do next when the old rules for careers no longer apply. Purchase the book here.
Wednesdays, 4-5 PM: Sept 30, Oct 14, Oct 21, Oct 28, Nov 18. Open to UC San Diego students and the public.