Attending Ro-Man 2024 in Pasadena was an eye-opening experience. The theme of this year’s conference, Embracing Human-Centered HRI, resonates deeply with me. As a designer who has always been enthusiastic about creating meaningful human experiences with emerging technologies — I get really excited about the idea of robots getting smarter, more useful, and more empathetic to our needs.

Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle who explored the nature of the soul and the essence of human knowledge in his treatise “De Anima,” along with visionaries of the 20th century like Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, and Isaac Asimov, have been fascinated by and rigorously studied the concept of intelligence for centuries. Turing’s work on computability and the famous “Turing Test” laid the theoretical foundation for evaluating machine intelligence. At the same time, Shannon’s research into chess-playing programs hinted at the vast potential for machines to exhibit intelligent behavior. However, Asimov’s “Robot series” and his notable ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ offered a glimpse into a future where intelligent machines could work alongside their human creators.

At San Francisco Design Week 2024, Card79 welcomed attendees into its studio for “Hello, Robot: Welcoming the Age of Human-Robot Interaction.” This engaging event dove into the burgeoning field of human-robot interactions, examining how design can play a role as AI and Robots converge to create new capabilities and businesses. The evening buzzed with excitement as participants showed genuine curiosity about the subject. The studio provided the perfect backdrop for a dynamic discussion on this evolving topic, nicely capturing the essence of innovation ‘in the making.’

It’s entirely fitting that this year’s San Francisco Design Week — a time honored tribute to the city’s design community — adopted the “Plot Twist” as its organizing theme. Amidst the tumult we’ve encountered in the worlds of design and technology, it feels like we’ve lived through several era-defining plot twists. And the year isn’t even half over…

A Reflection on the SXSW 2023 Panel

We are in the very early days of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and there are still years of scientific research that needs to be carried out to get anywhere near creating powerful consumer-based BCI products. But, as designers, we believe it’s important to imagine what types of experiences this technology would enable in order to create the human-centered future for BCI.

Kintsugi Upgrades is an NFT collection that uses the Japanese mending technique called kintsugi to combine medieval and post classical artifacts with high-tech fixtures to create a product that exists for a purely digital realm. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery by adhering the pieces back together and dusting the cracks with gold powder. The result is an entirely unique creation that is functional once again, but in the case of Kintsugi Upgrades, the original functionality has completely changed.

In December 2021, Card79 launched the Kintsugi Upgrades NFT collection. The goal was to reimagine physical objects in the real world as technologically advanced digital artifacts that could exist in the future. Card79 has sold two NFTs and the rest of our NFTs can be found on our opensea page.

Austin, TX – On March 14, Card79 design studio hosted a panel – moderated by CEO Afshin Mehin – called The Fact or Fiction of Brain Computer Interfaces at SXSW 2022. The studio has collaborated with companies such as Neuralink to design powerful consumer-based BCI products to bring this innovative technology into the hands of everyday people.

As we head into 2022, our design studio took a moment to take stock of which direction the fields of design, culture and technology are heading towards and seeing how well they line up with who we are. We are excited about 2022, and we decided to share major design and technology trends that we hope to explore in the next 12 months.