About
I’m an Associate Professor at TU Delft, working in human-algorithm interaction - exploring the messy terrain between people, data and things through a combination of making and thinking. My work centres on entangled interactions: the new ground of design and HCI as pervasive intelligence reshapes what it means to interact with technology, as interactions are now networked rather than person-to-person, fluid rather than bounded, and increasingly conceptual and epistemic, mediated through metaphors, imaginaries and the encoded knowledge of foundation models. I work to define this space, develop methods for designing within it, and ensure the resulting systems make room for human agency, meaning and justice. I am a synthesist, working across computer science, design, social science, speculation and theory.
The core of my practice is relational prototyping: a synthesis of design, computer science and socio-technical thought that surfaces existing relations, speculates about future possibilities, and materialises those speculations into things that can be examined, tested and lived with. Through the AI Futures Lab I apply this in high-stakes contexts — supporting victims of sexual violence, exploring the workplace implications of foundation models and shaping the future of physical work. Conceptually, I develop new foundations for these spaces: meaning-making with epistemic technologies, meaningful transparency as a relational, design-led approach to Civic AI, metaphor as a primitive in AI design. I collaborate on power-aware design practices, build experiential, speculative and role-played methods, trace how theories, values and practices shape technologies, and explore how embodied creative practice can form a counterpart to technical explanation.
See info on academic work, with more detail on research, teaching and PhD supervision.
In my creative practice I engage with interactions between people and technology. I make music using computers and controllers, and our laptop trio Raw Green Rust has played in many interesting places. I create artworks that explore technological and social phenomena and have been shown internationally (ZKM, Creativity and Cognition, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Talbot Rice Gallery) and have won multiple awards (Lumen Prize, New Technology Art Award).
Upcoming public events
Selected recent papers
- BibTeX
@inproceedings{bendor2026SmallAIa, title = {Small {{AI}}: {{A}} Degrowth Imaginary for Designing with/for Artificial Intelligence}, shorttitle = {Small {{AI}}}, booktitle = {{{DRS Biennial Conference Series}}}, author = {Bendor, Roy and Murray-Rust, Dave and Rehak, Rainer}, date = {2026-06-08}, url = {https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2026/researchpapers/233}, year = {2026}, month = jun }
- BibTeX
@inproceedings{giaccardi2026CospeculatingAI, title = {Co-Speculating with {{AI}}: {{From}} Prompts to Practices}, shorttitle = {Co-Speculating with {{AI}}}, booktitle = {{{DRS Biennial Conference Series}}}, author = {Giaccardi, Elisa and Lindley, Joseph and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Zhu, Giulia Jiangxian and Murray-Rust, Dave}, date = {2026-06-08}, url = {https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2026/researchpapers/433}, year = {2026}, month = jun }
- Applied Speculations in the Baggage Hall: Transdisciplinary Thinking around Robotic Work Futures
Abstract
Robotic technologies are often proposed to relieve dull, dirty, or dangerous work, but may cause work to instead be experienced as boring, or dehumanized. Understanding the impact of robotics on the workfloor is complicated by the entanglement between emerging robotic capabilities, social dynamics, and organizational issues—which we call Worker–Robot Relations. Consequently, the impact of robotics on work is often studied in hindsight. Speculative design methodologies can facilitate alignment of robotic developments with a meaningful future of work, by creating boundary objects for communicating about current and future work practices. Making use of an unfolding artistic collaboration, we propose an experiential approach for speculating about future Worker–Robot Relations. We enabled speculative encounters between participants and robotic creatures that embody seven meta-behaviors. We abstracted these from observed behaviors in a current work context in baggage handling. We present the findings from focus groups responding to these encounters, including implications for HRI and speculative design.
BibTeX@article{ianniello2026AppliedSpeculations, title = {Applied {{Speculations}} in the {{Baggage Hall}}: {{Transdisciplinary Thinking}} around {{Robotic Work Futures}}}, shorttitle = {Applied {{Speculations}} in the {{Baggage Hall}}}, author = {Ianniello, Alessandro and Murray-Rust, Dave S. and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Filthaut, Liliane and Coppelmans, Tom C. J. and Forster, Deborah F. and Verhoef, Eva S. and Abbink, David A.}, date = {2026-06-15}, journaltitle = {ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction}, shortjournal = {ACM Trans. Hum.-Robot Interact.}, volume = {15}, number = {4}, pages = {78:1--78:37}, doi = {10.1145/3813106}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3813106}, urldate = {2026-06-30}, year = {2026}, month = jun }
- En Route without a Steering Wheel – a Victim-Centred Mapping of Power in the Criminal Justice System
Abstract
Victims of sexual assault who turn to the criminal justice system for help often end up with negative experiences or even secondary trauma. While previous research has highlighted the challenges victims face, it tends to focus on individual interactions and rarely takes a holistic, victim-centred view of the process. Furthermore, it often highlights the actions of other stakeholders, rather than exploring the victim’s ability to act. This means that systemic structures that influence the victim’s experience and their ability to shape that experience can go unnoticed. Using a human-centred design approach, journey mapping, we map the victim’s experience, looking at the case of the Dutch criminal justice system. The journey map shows what interactions and non-interactions the victim encounters. We then analyse the map using a feminist theory of power, the Matrix of Domination, to explore how power impacts the victim’s experience, both on an interpersonal and structural level. In our study, we find that victims initially hold power, but that they lose it almost entirely when a case is filed. This lack of power results in the victim not having control of their journey in the criminal justice system, and results in different types of harm. We argue that if we want to improve victims’ experiences, mapping power allows us to move beyond individual interactions and focus on systemic, structural changes.
BibTeX@article{dideriksen2025RouteSteering, title = {En Route without a Steering Wheel – a Victim-Centred Mapping of Power in the Criminal Justice System}, author = {Dideriksen, Sofie-Amalie Torp and Murray-Rust, Dave and Visser, Froukje Sleeswijk and Stappers, Pieter Jan}, date = {2025-12-15}, journaltitle = {Legal Design Journal}, shortjournal = {Leg. Des. J.}, volume = {2}, number = {1}, issn = {3049-5644}, doi = {10.82305/8p6z-4585}, url = {https://ojs.library.lancs.ac.uk/ldj/article/view/165}, urldate = {2026-04-14}, langid = {english}, keywords = {feminism,journey mapping,matrix of domination,power,Sexual assault}, year = {2025}, month = dec }
- Artificial Intelligence and Other Speculative Metaphors
Abstract
The paper proposes “speculative metaphors” as constructs for reframing and critically engaging with ideas of artificial intelligence. It identifies a broad range of AI metaphors in the wider culture and technical literature and discusses metaphor design in terms of explanation, persuasion and speculation. To explore different metaphor design strategies, we use a custom GPT to generate a large number of variants on the “artificial intelligence” metaphor. The paper contributes a conceptual framing for such speculative metaphor drawing on ideas of knowledge and understanding, fusion and synthesis, collaboration and collectives. We argue that generating speculative metaphors provides a means of thinking critically about human-AI interaction.
BibTeX@inproceedings{blythe2025ArtificialIntelligence, title = {Artificial {{Intelligence}} and Other {{Speculative Metaphors}}}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 {{ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference}}}, author = {Blythe, Mark and Lindley, Siân and Murray-Rust, Dave}, date = {2025-07-05}, pages = {347--356}, publisher = {ACM}, location = {Madeira Portugal}, doi = {10.1145/3715336.3735714}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715336.3735714}, urldate = {2025-07-22}, eventtitle = {{{DIS}} '25: {{Designing Interactive Systems Conference}}}, year = {2025}, month = jul }
- Prompting Realities: Exploring the Potentials of Prompting for Tangible Artifacts
Abstract
Designing meaningful tangible and embodied interactions remains challenging due to their situated nature, complex user needs, and the limited programming skills of many users as well as designers. We developed an interaction model where users and LLMs co-perform tangible actions through prompt engineering beyond deterministic logic of commercial smart systems. In this model AI systems interpret natural language descriptions of environmental context, internalize technical functionalities and spatial cues, and translate these into tangible actions. We encapsulated the interaction model within a LLM-enabled tangible artifact as a HCI provotype and conducted an initial exploratory study around it. Our preliminary findings point to opportunities in refinement and reappropriation of such systems over the use period as well as challenges in adapting deictic spatial references.
BibTeX@inproceedings{mehrvarz2025PromptingRealitiesa, title = {Prompting {{Realities}}: {{Exploring}} the {{Potentials}} of {{Prompting}} for {{Tangible Artifacts}}}, shorttitle = {Prompting {{Realities}}}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 16th {{Biannual Conference}} of the {{Italian SIGCHI Chapter}}}, author = {Mehrvarz, Mahan and Murray-Rust, Dave and Verma, Himanshu}, date = {2025-10-14}, series = {{{CHItaly}} '25}, pages = {1--6}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, location = {New York, NY, USA}, doi = {10.1145/3750069.3750089}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3750069.3750089}, urldate = {2026-01-13}, isbn = {979-8-4007-2102-1}, year = {2025}, month = oct }
- (Un)Making AI Magic: A Design Taxonomy
Abstract
This paper examines the role that enchantment plays in the design of AI things by constructing a taxonomy of design approaches that increase or decrease the perception of magic and enchantment. We start from the design discourse surrounding recent developments in AI technologies, highlighting specific interaction qualities such as algorithmic uncertainties and errors and articulating relations to the rhetoric of magic and supernatural thinking. Through analyzing and reflecting upon 52 students’ design projects from two editions of a Masters course in design and AI, we identify seven design principles and unpack the effects of each in terms of enchantment and disenchantment. We conclude by articulating ways in which this taxonomy can be approached and appropriated by design/HCI practitioners, especially to support exploration and reflexivity.
BibTeX@inproceedings{lupetti2024MakingAI, title = {({{Un}})Making {{AI Magic}}: {{A Design Taxonomy}}}, shorttitle = {({{Un}})Making {{AI Magic}}}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the {{CHI Conference}} on {{Human Factors}} in {{Computing Systems}}}, author = {Lupetti, Maria Luce and Murray-Rust, Dave}, date = {2024-05-11}, series = {{{CHI}} '24}, pages = {1--21}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, location = {New York, NY, USA}, doi = {10.1145/3613904.3641954}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641954}, urldate = {2024-06-11}, isbn = {979-8-4007-0330-0}, keywords = {artificial intelligence,critical computing,critical design,magic,research through design}, year = {2024}, month = may }