Human-Centered AI Design in Reality: A Study of Developer Companies’ Practices
Open accessAbstract
Human-Centered AI (HCAI) advocates the development of AI applications that are trustworthy, usable, and based on human needs. While the conceptual foundations of HCAI are extensively discussed in recent literature, the industry practices and methods appear to lag behind. To advance HCAI method development, current practices of AI developer companies need to be understood. To understand how HCAI principles manifest in the current practices of AI development, we conducted an interview study of practitioners from 12 AI developer companies in Finland, focusing on the early stages of AI application development. Our thematic analysis reveals current development practices and identifies four main challenges: (i) detachment of HCAI work from technical development, (ii) clients’ central role as the source of user requirements, (iii) uncertain nature of AI, and (iv) lack of value-based understanding of AI. The findings inform the development of HCAI methods and implementation of HCAI principles in AI application development.
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Recent studies investigate the impact of technology on design and creative workflows, and the potential for its usage as a design support tool.
“This has resulted in a number of recent studies that investigate the impact of technology on design and creative workflows, and the potential for its usage as a design support tool (e.g.[2,11,20,24,58]).”
From Is Resistance Futile?: Early Career Game Developers, Generative AI, and Ethical Skepticism (2024) · cites this paper as [20]
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Capability maturity model, version 1.1
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Is Resistance Futile?: Early Career Game Developers, Generative AI, and Ethical Skepticism
Boucher, J. D., Smith, G., & Telliel, Y. D. (2024) · Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3613904.3641889 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
- Authors
- Hartikainen, M., Väänänen, K., Lehtiö, A., Ala-Luopa, S., & Olsson, T.
- Affiliations
- Tampere University (FI)
- Venue
- Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2022-10-08
- Pages
- 1-11
- OpenAlex
- W4297156436
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 6.93
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Tampere University Institutional Repository (Tampere University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Tampereen Yliopisto
- European Regional Development Fund
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
- Keywords
- human-centered AI, AI application development, development practice, user requirements, client participation, practitioner perspectives
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