Kaleido – Intelligent Tools of Meaning Making in Design

Description

Generative AI promises frictionless creativity. But what happens when critical thinking, reflection, and interpretation are increasingly delegated to machines? Kaleido explores how AI can be designed not only as a tool for efficiency, but as a catalyst for meaning-making in the design process. Combining perspectives from design research, hermeneutics, and human–computer interaction, the project investigates how AI can support designers in questioning assumptions and reframing perspectives. Through interviews, self-observation, and the development of 12 functional prototypes, the research examines interaction mechanisms such as productive friction, perspective shifts, irritation, and reflective scaffolding. These explorations are combined in Kaleido, an experimental AI tool that positions AI as an epistemic co-actor rather. The project argues that the future role of designers lies in actively shaping how meaning is constructed in collaboration with intelligent systems.