{"id":4905,"date":"2026-10-21T13:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2026-10-21T13:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:26:09","slug":"keep-the-tension-designing-with-generative-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2026\/10\/21\/keep-the-tension-designing-with-generative-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep the tension: designing with generative AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slides from my keynote at the CLICKNL Design Innovation Sessions, Digital Futures theme session, Dutch Design Week, 21 October 2026, Natlab, Eindhoven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

CLICKNL invited me to give this keynote. I saw it as a great opportunity to intervene in the debate about design and generative AI. My take is informed by my past work on contestability. That work is all about approaching \u201cAI\u201d as an arena where various parties compete over how it is made and how it is used. My take is also informed by my commitments to practice theory and political realism. Practice theory means looking at what people and things do together, rather than at technologies in isolation. Political realism means looking at politics as it actually happens. It asks who does what to whom, for whose benefit, instead of starting from abstract moral principles.<\/p>\n\n\n

In the talk I argue that neither wholesale rejection nor uncritical embrace of generative AI will get us very far. GenAI deskills designers and opens up new ways of designing at the same time. It is built on the past work of designers, which raises the question of whose work we build on, and who gets to call the results their own. And it automates work, but in the process work may get delegated more than replaced, transforming practices as a result. Rather than trying to resolve these tensions, I look for emerging design practices that hold them and use them as an engine for moving forward. I discuss three cases: Vera van der Burg\u2019s Text-to-Clay, Blaze Type\u2019s test of Monotype\u2019s AI type tool, and The Call by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst. They all go beyond consuming off-the-shelf models. They treat pipelines and workflows as an object of design. And in all three there is an awareness of the value of effort and friction. I end with an open question. If AI is not one thing, not an agent, and neither our savior nor our doom, what metaphor does your mind go to?<\/p>\n\n\n

I hope this talk helps designers think in concrete terms about how we might \u201cdo AI\u201d differently from the dominant ways. And I hope it helps them break free from the simplistic for-or-against debates that get us nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n