Academic Bio

Dave Murray-Rust is Associate Professor in Human-Algorithm Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. He explores the messy terrain between people, data, algorithms and things through a combination of making and thinking to build better futures for humans and AI. He also holds an Honorary Fellowship with the University of Edinburgh.

His work centres on systems that use data as a medium for design while exploring social and technical issues and the agencies between humans and machines. It is multidisciplinary, touching on computer science, design theories, design ethnography and digital sociology. This involves questions such as how to design the interactions that let machine learning algorithms develop amicable co-dependencies with humans, how artificial intelligence can make sense of human behaviour to support design insights, and how designerly approaches can improve the understanding and creation of data driven systems and improve the societal functioning of AI as a discipline.

My page on the TU Delft Website and Google Scholar

Research Overview

My research centres on human-algorithm interaction - how do people relate to algorithms in different configurations and different scales. Current projects:

• DCODE: rethinking design through a post-industrial lens to deal with inclusive digital futures, trusted interactions and future design practices
• AI Futures Lab: exploring rights and justice in AI mediated remote work through speculative and critical design, sociolegal systems and philosophy.
• Experiential AI: how do we use creative practice to better understand artificial intelligence, as publics, practitioners and researchers?
• AI Prototpying: how can we bring design theory together with technological advances to prototype new relationships with AI? What design methods might we create?
• Designing AI Interactions: how can we help designers to find new configurations around interactive AI models?

More details in the Research section.

Full List of Publications

Teaching Overview

I coordinate

• Interactive Technology Design, where we spend 20 weeks rapidly prototyping experiential and contextualised possibilities of technology - last online exhibition here.
• Interdisciplinary AI Research Methods (new course!) where we will be looking at cutting edge design research methods that help to critique AI deployments.

I have several PhD Students and am happy to supervise more. See PhD for details.

email: d.murray-rust[at]ed.ac.uk