AI as a Design Material

The Phone App 8 layers

What feels ‘normal’

Multi-core CPU + GPU
Cellular radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth stack
Capacitive touch digitizer
Accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer
OS with millions of lines of code
App store review & distribution pipeline
Battery management & thermal throttling
Screen rendering at 60-120 fps

This is more technology than a space shuttle. You’re just used to it.

The Spatial Interface 4 things

What feels ‘too technical’

A camera (OAK-D)
A small model
A few rules
No screen required

No app to download. No screen to tap. No menu to navigate. The room just responds.

The invisible interface is actually less technology — but it’s unfamiliar. And unfamiliar things still need to be designed, prototyped, built, and tested by designers. That’s the point. We don’t know how to make the invisible work until we try.

Material Properties

Model Size 3B

balsa wood — light, easy to shape, limited strength

Tiny (0.5B) Frontier (405B+)

Temperature 0.7

cool wax — holds shape, some flexibility

0.0 (ice) 2.0 (steam)

Context Window 4K tokens

sticky note — short memory, quick glances

256 (sticky note) 128K (library)

Specialization General

raw clay — flexible, adapts to many shapes

General (raw clay) Fine-tuned (fired ceramic)

Design Impact Preview

What this material feels like

Good for

Bad for

Runs on

Design constraints

Pick a challenge, set your sliders, then write. What tradeoffs did you make and why?

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Smart Lamp

Design a lamp that responds to voice

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Design a desk lamp that responds to voice commands and adjusts to your activity. It needs to run without an internet connection. Pick your material properties above. What model size do you choose and why? What happens when someone says something unexpected?

📚

Study Buddy

Design an AI tutor that balances speed and depth

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Design an AI study companion for university students. It should help with questions across multiple subjects, remember context within a study session, and feel conversational. What tradeoffs do you make between response speed and answer depth? How does context window affect the experience when a student is reviewing a long paper?

🔔

Ambient Dashboard

Design a calm notification surface

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Design a wall-mounted display for a shared studio that summarizes activity — who’s working on what, upcoming deadlines, room status. It should feel calm, not noisy. How does temperature affect the personality of its summaries? Should it be predictable (low temp) or occasionally surprising (high temp)? What context window does it need to track a full day?