In human-centered design, developing a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of user experiences, i.e., empathic understanding, is paramount for designing products that truly meet human needs. Nevertheless, accurately comprehending the real underlying mental states of a large human population remains a significant challenge today. This difficulty mainly arises from the trade-off between depth and scale of user experience research: gaining in-depth insights from a small group of users does not easily scale to a larger population, and vice versa. This paper investigates the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for performing mental inference tasks, specifically inferring users' underlying goals and fundamental psychological needs (FPNs). Baseline and benchmark datasets were collected from human users and designers to develop an empathic accuracy metric for measuring the mental inference performance of LLMs. The empathic accuracy of inferring goals and FPNs of different LLMs with varied zero-shot prompt engineering techniques are experimented against that of human designers. Experimental results suggest that LLMs can infer and understand the underlying goals and FPNs of users with performance comparable to that of human designers, suggesting a promising avenue for enhancing the scalability of empathic design approaches through the integration of advanced artificial intelligence technologies. This work has the potential to significantly augment the toolkit available to designers during human-centered design, enabling the development of both large-scale and in-depth understanding of users' experiences.

In the early stages of the design process, designers explore opportunities by discovering unmet needs and developing innovative concepts as potential solutions. From a human-centered design perspective, designers must develop empathy with people to truly understand their needs. However, developing empathy is a complex and subjective process that relies heavily on the designer's empathic capability. Therefore, the development of empathic understanding is intuitive, and the discovery of underlying needs is often serendipitous. This paper aims to provide insights from artificial intelligence research to indicate the future direction of AI-driven human-centered design, taking into account the essential role of empathy. Specifically, we conduct an interdisciplinary investigation of research areas such as data-driven user studies, empathic understanding development, and artificial empathy. Based on this foundation, we discuss the role that artificial empathy can play in human-centered design and propose an artificial empathy framework for human-centered design. Building on the mechanisms behind empathy and insights from empathic design research, the framework aims to break down the rather complex and subjective concept of empathy into components and modules that can potentially be modeled computationally. Furthermore, we discuss the expected benefits of developing such systems and identify current research gaps to encourage future research efforts.

A partnership between Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, is exploring new technologies around traffic prediction and a heightened understanding of vulnerable road users. Cubic, a transportation and transit technology provider, has entered into a five-year partnership with the university to further develop technology products that include artificial intelligence and machine learning that takes into consideration the wide variety of users of transportation systems. "At the center of everything we do is DEI -- diversity, equity and inclusion," said Ali Emadi, professor and research chair at McMaster University. "That's what makes us different from a lot of artificial intelligence centers in academia or in industry," he added. The project, known as the Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence and Smart Mobility, is also exploring the notion of "human-centered design," and populating design teams with researchers and technicians from across multiple backgrounds and expertise.

In the age of technology, many people fear that the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning will make human workers obsolete. When it comes to UX design, this has been a hot topic. Many people have surmised that the role of the UX designer will soon go the way of the dodo, assuming that soon we can simply enter a prompt craft by a Chat GPT into an AI imaging platform like Midjourney, and bam -- all of a sudden we have our user interface. This couldn't be further from the truth… unless you want your user interface to behave as if it was downloaded from dribbble, which would look very pretty, but would most likely cause more usability friction and user frustration than it would solve. In fact, the rise of technology makes UX designers more crucial than ever before.

Mitigating bias: AI systems can perpetuate and amplify bias in their training data, which can lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes. To mitigate bias, it's important to actively identify and address sources of bias in the data and algorithms used to train AI systems. Transparency: AI systems should be transparent in their decision-making processes, so that users can understand how they arrived at a particular decision or output. This can help users to identify and correct any errors or biases in the system. Accountability: AI systems should be designed and implemented in a way that makes it possible to hold individuals and organizations responsible for their actions.

For anyone doubting that AI is here, the New York Times recently reported that Carnegie Mellon University plans to create a research center that focuses on the ethics of artificial intelligence. Harvard Business Review started laying the foundation for what it means for management, and CNBC started analyzing promising AI stocks. I made the relatively optimistic case that design in the short term is safe from AI because good design demands creative and social intelligence. But this short-term positive outlook did not alleviate all of my concerns. This year, my daughter started college, pursuing a degree in interaction design.

What is a democratic internet, and how does it intersect with the evolving nature of HCI? In fact, experts like Elizabeth Gerber, professor and co-director of the Center for Human Computer Interaction Design at Northwestern University, say there is not a single aspect of many humans' lives that is not touched by near-ubiquitous internet access and adoption of connected devices. And while "near ubiquitous" is not the same as ubiquitous and there are still a great number of people without easy access to an internet connection, Gerber says for those who do, computing technology is becoming as invisible and essential as oxygen. As a result, many forget the extent to which they have set up their lives and businesses to depend on it. The internet is a powerful tool, and humans can use it in many powerful ways--including to create social change.

If A.I. is a tool, design is the handle or grip which allows humans to wield it.

Suzanne is a global expert and proven strategic marketing and communications lead on strategic initiatives for corporations, start-ups, non-profits, and the community. Suzanne's most recent project is Mindful Mornings Miami, the hottest new one-hour talk show on independent JoltRadio. With a reach of over 200,000, the show focuses on what it means to wake up and live in the world today. We have the pleasure of welcoming Suzanne Jewell to our interview series, I am Aishwarya Jain from the peopleHum team before we begin just a quick introduction of peopleHum, peopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated Human Capital Management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work with AI and automation technologies. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors a year and publish around 2 interviews with well-known names globally, every month. We're thrilled to have you on our series. Awesome to be here and welcome to everyone, and my first wish is that everyone is awake, aware and well, today! Thank you so much for that. You know, my experience of living in one place and working on pretty much every other continent on the planet really made me aware that I was always in, kind of autopilot. The media tends to do that, both in the way that it bombards us. And I find that I personally was really being the same way, and so, in that regard for me, mindfulness became a way to really get present to what was going on wherever I happen to be on the planet for my GPS location, but also where my head and my mind and my body is located. The most recent Harvard study actually shows that 47% of the time that we're out of bed and awakened vertical, our mind and our body are actually not in the same place.

Health care has come a long way and with the integration of technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning¹ and natural language processing, clinicians derive insights from data with better outcomes. At the same time, the adoption of technology in healthcare has faced challenges with health care providers unable to harness the power of technology to address patient problems. Human-centered design is one framework gaining traction in the health care world, with physicians using frameworks to understand patient problems and address them. The human-centered model has the interest of patients and enables collaboration and communication. Simply put, human-centered design² brings together all stakeholders including patients, clinicians and technology to offer seamless experiences across the board.