Mediating between AI and Highly Specialized Users

We report part of the design experience gained in X-Media, a system for knowledge management and sharing. Consolidated techniques of interaction design (scenario-based design) had to be revisited to capture the richness and complexity of intelligent interactive systems. We show that the design of intelligent systems requires methodologies (faceted scenarios) that support the investigation of intelligent features and usability factors simultaneously. Interaction designers become mediators between intelligent technology and users and have to facilitate reciprocal understanding. However, which design process should be followed to achieve such success is not clear: is a user-centered system design process enough, or should a new practice be developed to address the specificity of systems able to take autonomous decisions? From the very beginning it was clear that a participatory approach with both users and technologists discussing and contributing to the system design was not an easy goal: ambiguity in terminology and gaps in understanding could not be easily overcome. A new role had to be devised, that of a mediator that moves between the two parties, facilitates the communication, and helps each group see the potential in what the other has to offer. A number of tools to facilitate the mediation and preserve the original intended meaning (so as to avoid "translation mistakes" while moving from one group to the other) were devised. Mediating between the parties meant an increase in the number of design iterations, as, for example, discussing with users a potential solution generated new ideas for additional intelligent features that had to be discussed with the AI experts and then validated with users. The rest of this article presents and discusses this experience in more detail.