UX Patterns for Collaborative Intelligences

Ghostwriter is a speculative prototype in the Artificial Intelligence + Designed Fictions Research Studio.

It is a kind of exploratory probe into an unexplored territory of collaboration with machine intelligences.

I’ve been using it as an experiment with modes of interaction with AI framed as a set of exploratory UX patterns to help me understand what it feels like to interact with, collaborate with, and be assisted in the writing process alongside of an artificial intelligence. (And the project also opens up the question, which is a bit pedantic, as to whether this is an artificial intelligence or a writing collaborator, assistant, or something else entirely.)

I had a very specific UX pattern in mind when I first started this project several months ago. The pattern was that I wanted an emanation of a continuity of thought, a kind of stream of collaborative consciousness, to emanate inline as I was writing. It wasn’t like I wanted this in order to write for me; rather, I wanted the feeling that I was writing with someone.

That is to say, a test to see if a sense or feeling of collaboration would obtain through some kind of specific UX pattern that I could design and implement in code.

I found this old advertisement for the awesome IBM Selectric typewriter.

The advertisement was selling the idea that this futuristic typewriter could change fonts. And probably doing so at a point in time where the idea of a font, or typeface was not top of mind to the addressable market for typewriters, if you follow. That is to say, can you imagine coming up with a value proposition for a very (at the time) expensive typewriter that could change fonts, like..in the 1960s and 1970s? I mean — you’re selling a tool — an instrument more of efficiency than creativity — to business people who are likely quite focused on costs and productivity.

So you can see how this advertisement is

At this point, we have a prototype that is functional.